Air India landing incident at LAX

[westhawk]

Watching live television news coverage of an Air India 747-400 which landed at LAX with an apparently flat tire. Nice footage of the landing complete with shower of sparks from the undercarriage! News reports are indicating that the crew alerted ATC of a problem prior to landing. Firefighters have sprayed the landing gear while the pax remain on board. Looks they have things well in hand.

Reports now coming in that it took off from LAX and had some tire or tires fail on takeoff. Both the runway they took off from (25R) and the one they landed on (25L) are closed for now.

Looks now like all four R/H body gear tires ended up shredded. Crew apparrently reported multiple blowouts on takeoff, dumped fuel and returned to land.

Westhawk

[Irishwingz]

Nice footage of the landing complete with shower of sparks from the undercarriage!

What about nice footage of an aircraft full of people nearly meeting their deaths? that would be much better, wouldnt it?

[westhawk]

For television producers maybe. Fortunately, there really wasn't much danger of anything so dramatic. And it was a gorgeous landing at that! Rolled it on nice and smooth. I suppose it must be a bit of a strain on those who don't know that the landing gear is designed to withstand much more abuse than landing with flat tires provides. If you want to see real terror, go watch the video of the Chalk's Mallard crash. I was very happy to watch a professional and well executed emergency landing after seeing that other video. As with the JetBlue landing of last month, this one was sensational footage of what turned out to be a non-event. Too bad nobody had cameras rolling when I had to land with a flat tire. That was a non-event too. Tower got a kick out of it though.

Westhawk

[Josh10524]

Ah yes, the raw unbridled terror of a flat tire. Nobody got hurt. The sparks looked cool. If you want something to be serious about, a seaplane just fell into the ocean with twenty people onboard and one less wing then it was supposed to have. Perhaps you've mistaken that thread for this one. I believe it's the next one down. Please check your posts before submitting. Thank you.

Good job to the crew, glad nobody was injured. Quite a display. I'll be interested to see what the circumstances were resulting in multiple flats on takeoff.

[FCS Explorer]

2 rwys closed? anybody remember when air india razed off the 25R LOC antenna in frankfurt under imc cond with their gear, bounced hard, went around and then landed with the -damaged- gear on 25L..... -> 2 rwys closed.

[the_hawk]

yeah almost 7 years ago (6y11m) :eek:

well LAX at least has another pair, FRA had only the 18 left (and that is usually dep only)

[EI-CFC]

Well done to the crew :)

[captain cumulonimbus]

Looking at that footage,why were the lights on inside the cabin? Its SOP to keep them off.It was so evident that in the dark i could tell it was a 744Combi due lack of internal lighting in the rear section.
Odd it seems?

[IcePack]

Not all Airlines operate to the same SOP's:cool:

[mjtibbs]

Looking at that footage,why were the lights on inside the cabin?

i wondered that myself.

[captain cumulonimbus]

Hi there.

ICEPACK,as far as i'm aware,pretty much all the airlines have dimming or turning off the cabin lights in the approach and landing phase as standard.Its an aeromedical safety requirement based on the principle that one's eyes need time in the dark to adjust and if one was suddenly to find onesself outside the cabin after an accident at night one would already be visually adjusted.

In a landing where there are definite safety concerns like this one,i would have thought cabin lights off would certainly be a priority.an evacuation would not have been a pretty sight with 350 temporarily night blind pax.

[BombayDuck]

Link to News Item (http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1578374,0006.htm)

Another (regional language) newspaper seems to have more details - tyre burst on takeoff or some associated tyre trouble; it says that the aircraft circled over the sea and dumped fuel. But for the life of me I cant figure out which sea they're talking about - after all the flight landed at Delhi.

Anyway, good job by the crew. I know it was nothing unique about the situation but still :)

[archae86]

Perhaps article which mentions the sea refers to the Los Angeles event, not the Delhi event?

[BombayDuck]

No, that was Air India, for one, and this was on the scroll lines at the bottom of two news channels yesterday. All of these have mentioned Chennai/Delhi as the source/destination, and this leads me to believe that it is a different incident...

[the_hawk]

The link you give is a different incident @Delhi, with no sea involved. ;) The "another newspaper" article is on the LAX incident.

[blueloo]

captain cumulonimbus, whilst i understand the rumoured belief that lights off is an areomedical thingy for eyesight adjustment, i think you will find it is really a result of the marketing department, so that pax get a better view, minus window reflection.

notice as soon as main cabin lights go out, a significant number of reading lights go back on? so it really doesnt achieve much for preserving eyesight - and i suspect this is a debatable issue at the best of times

some airlines, keep lights on for safety. if you have ever taxied around somewhere like nrt at night it is a sea of lights, so that when a carrier has lights off, if your lucky you can just make out the fuselage at night with red beacon. If a carrier leaves lights on, it is like a row of strip lighting the entire a/c length. It makes a plane a lot more visible at night.

As a pax I prefer lights off for the view, when operating, I prefer lights on for safety.

[captain cumulonimbus]

I'm afraid that while you make a good point about 'striplighting',i must strongly disagree that lights off in the cabin is of no use.We can't stop pax putting on their reading lights,but there is no doubt it is safer to let eyes adjust to the dark in case of finding yourself suddenly outside after a crash.you WOULD be blinded,albeit for a few seconds,it could be critical to escape.

Secondly,you have the R/B,yes,and i agree it is ineffective especially at large fields,but do you not use your tail illumination too? depending on type,you'd have a quarter acre lit up sticking into the air helping others see you.I use it whenever taxiing and below F100.Anyway nicely done to the AI crew:ok:

[ALLDAYDELI]

theres a large thread about this "dimming cabin lights" business in the Spectators Balcony forum which makes interesting reading.
Lights not blinding the crew in the flight deck at critical stages of flight also have something to do with it.

[ACarrickBend]

Report from the 22 December Los Angeles Times:

"It started Monday when their first plane blew a tire on takeoff, dumped fuel over the ocean and circled back to Los Angeles International Airport to land in a spray of sparks, shedding 200 pounds of rubber and metal on the runway.

"On Tuesday, hundreds of Air India passengers tried again, settling into a different jumbo jet with "Your Palace in the Sky" scrolled in red script near the tail. This time, one of the engines wouldn't start. For about five hours, travelers sat in the sweltering plane. Flight attendants locked up the drinks. Some passengers staged a mini revolt.

"Finally, passengers were taken off the plane and bused to a hotel, arriving at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. They overwhelmed the front desk, and some did not get to bed until 4 a.m.

"The weary travelers returned to LAX later Wednesday morning for their third attempt, a flight set to depart at 1 p.m. It was pushed back. It was moved up. And finally, around 4:30 p.m., they took off, bound for Frankfurt, Germany, and New Delhi.

"All in all, after two nights with little sleep, endless waits in line and three scheduled flights, their ordeal stretched to a 45-hour delay."

[JW411]

I was once privileged enough to lose 16 out of 20 tyres on landing due to a malfunction in the braking system.

At first it felt like severe nose wheel shimmy but ATC advised that the problem was within the main gear assemblies.

All 16 main wheel tyres had gone.

Apart from the fact that the aeroplane blocked the runway for several hours while 16 main wheel tyres and wheels were found, it was a relative non-event.

Ever since that day I have never worried about a burst tyre.

The worst disaster that I can recall which started off with just one burst tyre on take-off was the Spantax DC-10 disaster when they decided to abandon take-off AFTER V1 (at Malaga?) because of the noise and vibration of just one tyre failure.

Believe me, your aircraft is designed to land without ANY tyres.

[the_hawk]

It was Malaga: http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19820913-0

But one could count the Concorde disaster as "started off with just one burst tyre on take-off", too. :/