Flyegypt have pranged 3 Boeing 737’s in the past week - action needs to be taken

[4HolerPoler]

This is now a very serious situation, requiring urgent attention by European and Egyptian aviation regulators. Within 1 week Flyegypt have had 3 major incidents involving their B737’s in 3 different landings.

A Flyegypt B737-800 (SU-TMJ) from Hurghada to Frankfurt on 8 October ‘21 had a major failure of the outboard wheel on the right-hand main gear on landing. Simply put the entire wheel split into two pieces. On landing.

On 9 October ‘21, another of their aircraft, SU-TMG, burst and shredded the inboard tire on the right-hand main gear on landing at Paris CDG. Engineers were able to replace this wheel and the aircraft departed around 2 & 1/2 hours late.

Most recently, on 15 October ‘21, a Flyegypt Boeing 737-700, registration SU-TMM performing flight FT-3103 from Hurghada to Cluj (Romania) with 113 people on board, landed on Cluj's runway 25 at 19:12L, when upon touchdown tower immediately observed sparks and flames from the landing gear. The aircraft came to a stop on the runway with all four main tyres burst about 1028 meters past the displaced runway threshold.

Boeing make strong aircraft. When an airline starts breaking strong aircraft at the rate of 3 a week it’s time for regulators to shut this airline down.

I would appeal to members who have influence with regulatory bodies or aviation news media to flag this unacceptable state of affairs.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/750x1000/735d37a0_d050_4bda_82a4_9b9d383415b4_016b9a57f21511fd1a464d7 a2b8d512aba30e2fc.jpeg
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https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/750x563/2f0001e4_3ec3_4b17_91f3_3fd81b3b7c81_81eddd804ba735b78a95ea2 385c7ca4ab2b570a3.jpeg

[Wizofoz]

Always thought it odd you could set the park-brake of a 737 in flight- i mean; what could go wrong?

[Max Angle]

You can also do it on a 320 as a couple of colleagues discovered the hard way.

[safetypee]

4HP, don't jump to conclusions - unacceptability.

Remember that failure probabilities - likelihood, have no time scale, limit, or favoured few.

If it can happen, it will, but when; again and again.

[Alt Flieger]

Setting the park brake on a B737 requires a couple of very deliberate actions and I would have thought highly unlikely.
Mishandled landing with Antiskid Inop. will do it easily however.

[Sam Asama]

safetypee

safetypee -- with respect... I may be misunderstanding your point, but if you are suggesting that likelihood does not or should not take recent known events into consideration you are either misunderstanding or mis-applying the concept. If you were conducting a risk assessment of the likelihood of Boeing 737 landing gear incidents globally (all carriers, all destinations) your position can be defended. If, on the other hand, you were conducting a risk assessment today of the specific likelihood of a FlyEgypt incident related to the landing gear or wheels, and you did not apply a higher likelihood than you would have three weeks ago, you need to read up on factors affecting likelihood.

[safetypee]

Sam, “… likelihood does not or should not take recent known events into consideration”

My limited understanding of probability theory requires care in differentiating events involving knowledge of cause (first event), which might then be related to subsequent events; from those without evidence of cause - correlation is not a cause - dependant or independent events.

#1 suggest that there have been three separate technical events (not identical), but erroneously concludes that the ‘cause’, is the operator; … we don't know.

[42go]

Occam's Razor?

[Locked door]

Three unrelated gear events in a week seems unlikely, there’s probably a root cause.

I remember many years ago the Monday morning PIA 777 in MAN had a brake fire on each arrival, to the point that the fire services would be waiting without being called. It was traced back to the fact that the MAN service was the first flight after maintenance for each aircraft and an engineer had been dipping the brake pads in lacquer to make them look shiny and new.

[Sam Asama]

safetypee... Thanks for the response. We are closer on this than may be apparent.

I certainly agree that we don't know the cause(s) yet and therefore cannot come to conclusions re correlation. But the point of mitigation in safety sensitive endeavours like aviation is to, at times, take proactive steps to reduce the likelihood of a recurrence, sometimes long before we have direct evidence of cause or contributing factors. The MAX grounding is of course a recent example, but others come to mind re groundings or restricting certain ops until more is known.

Such decisions cannot be taken lightly but on occasion prudence dictates we must modify or eliminate certain operations until we do know more about cause. Much easier (and more defensible) to justify taking such action than not doing so, if another, more serious, event were to occur.

And, at its root, this is not a regulatory problem. In my (far too many) years directly involved in airline, airport and ANS ops and safety, it is the service provider (company) with a mature safety culture that will take risk mitigation action long before a regulator. In the (hypothetical) best world that is how it should be.

[DaveReidUK]

The only conclusion(s) that can be drawn from the three events are that none can be drawn (yet).

I'd be interested to know what "action needs to be taken" that would mitigate what appear to be 3 entirely different failure modes.

[Timmy Tomkins]

It is obvious that there is no firm conclusion available yet but if one operator has 3 similar events, especially in the short time period, that a bit more than a raised eyebrow seems worthwhile. I would hope the regulator would drop in and have a chat to see if there's a link.

[flyfan]

According to one poster on avherald the 737 releases the parking brake as soon as you select gear down. Never tried it, so can't confirm that. Nonetheless I see no reason to set the parking brake in flight...

[krismiler]

I wonder if lack of recency played a part in any of these incidents.

[DaveReidUK]

flyfan

"According to one poster on avherald the 737 releases the parking brake as soon as you select gear down."

If so, that would make sense.

If not, one would have expected Murphy to find that out at some point over the last 50-odd years ...

[PAXboy]

One aspect of this might be, not replacing tyres until they are worn beyond use?

[Sam Asama]

DaveReidUK

None other than James Reason (and others whose day-to-day work involves aviation safety) would disagree with your first sentence, if by stating that, you are suggesting that these occurrences don't warrant an immediate look at the company's safety culture. The nature of any mitigating "action(s) to be taken" would arise from any common contributors identified in the analysis of each event, i.e. training (maintenance and ops) safety culture, procedures (maintenance and ops), organisational issues, etc.

The notion that several seemingly unrelated events is cause for concern, and therefore a review of some sort should take place, is incorporated into ICAO's safety oversight guidance material, and into the specific audit / surveillance criteria for many civil aviation regulators (CASA Australia, Transport Canada as examples).

“An insight into the safety health of an organisation can be gained by an examination of its safety history and of the environment within which it operates. A series of apparently unrelated safety events may be regarded as tokens of an underlying systemic failure of the overall safety system.” (see Reason, Human Error (1990))

[DaveReidUK]

No argument there.

When, and only when, such an analysis has been done can conclusions be drawn. Hence my reference to "not yet".

[Yeehaw22]

Locked door

Haha oh dear, is this the level we're at now. Brake pads? :ugh:
​​​​​​
Try incorrect wheel bearing grease.
​​​

[anson harris]

4HolerPoler - did I read that right? You're a moderator?
To be honest with you I think your post is kinda ridiculous. And it's this kind of thing that has driven many of the professional posters on this forum away. I dip in every few months, but usually regret it.

[Gizm0]

I have to agree with the last couple of sentences here. PPRuNe has lost objectivity - and thus also professionalism.

[Dan Winterland]

You can also do it on a 320 as a couple of colleagues discovered the hard way.

It's a bit harder these days as the FWS will put up an ECAM warning to alert you of your error. Probably as a result of these events.

[sandiego89]

Hmmm, I am not sure I would consider burst tires (tyres for my UK friends) and wheel issues a "prang"......now wrinkles and dents, O2 masks dropping, gear torn off, etc. that's more like it.....

[4HolerPoler]

Ahh, how typical - Anson & Co moderating the moderators. Talk about objectivity!

If I think 3 gear/ wheel issues is a prang that’s what I’m going to call it; it’s my opinion. I’m not trying to influence your narrow opinions.

This is a very serious issue and needs to be addressed and urgently investigated by the relevant authorities. That’s all I’m saying.

[hunbet]

Having spent 41 years working on 737's I would classify this as 3 separate incidences of different failures.

The broken wheel a result of missing a small crack on inspection during the last tire buildup.\
The blown tire a result of an underinflated tire. It could have occurred at any time it was on the axle. Underinflated tires cause heat buildup and eventually failure .
The 4 blown tires by skidding on a wet runway and applying brakes before the wheels have come up to speed after touchdown. Locked wheel protection doesn't kick in until the wheel has come up to a certain speed.In the pictures you can see the surface is wet.

I have seen all 3 of these failures many times over 41 years and have seen multiple flat spotted tires on the same shift, broken rims about 3 times and blown tires almost weekly.

[Yeehaw22]

Blown tyres weekly? Either some pretty shoddy maintenance or a very dodgy tyre supplier :rolleyes:

[safetypee]

4HP, most people respect the right, and oft necessity of individual opinions in this forum; however, opinion without justification, factual evidence, argued reasoning is of little value; just clutter, chat, …

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”

https://theconversation.com/no-youre-not-entitled-to-your-opinion-9978

[ATC Watcher]

Yeehaw22

or a very large airline perhaps.
That aside I am always amazed to see how quickly today by looking at a photo or a FR24 printout so many are already explaining everything , and as a result some more passing immediate judgement of who is to blame and should be fired .:rolleyes:

[lederhosen]

I flew the 737 for many years and literally never saw any blown tyres, so for me three in a week in a small airline looks very unusual. I cannot agree that this happening weekly might be considered normal. It will be interesting to find out more, but if I worked for them I would be expecting some increase in ramp checks in the near future.

[4HolerPoler]

That’s all I’m looking for lederhosen - a spotlight on the operator. 3 related issues in one week on a relatively small fleet is simply not normal.

[Avman]

To be fair you were looking for more. I quote from your opening post: "When an airline starts breaking strong aircraft at the rate of 3 a week it’s time for regulators to shut this airline down".

I think shutting it down would be a little premature at this stage.

[Equivocal]

This is a very serious issue and needs to be addressed and urgently investigated by the relevant authorities.I'd like to think that the operator themselves are investigating these events...like their Safety Management System should lead them to do. I would expect any aircraft operator to treat every incident as an independent event in the first instance (to avoid confirmation bias, if nothing else) and for the investigation to identify any common causal or contributory factors, which, if there are any, means that the events are not, in fact, independent. To jump to conclusions on the basis of the level of analysis suggested in the original post is unwise.

Yes, one would expect the local regulator to take a look - ideally to see that the operator is correctly assessing the situation themselves. But with the three event all occurring in EASA-land, why not ask EASA to investigate? It is, after all, one of the reasons for requiring reporting from all member states and for setting up a central repository...you know, to identify trends which are not evident within a single State.

[Winemaker]

4HolerPoler, just for the sake of clarity, who is moderating this thread? If it's you, isn't that sort of a conflict? I'm not being a wise guy and don't want to get banned for asking.... just wondering what policy is.

[4HolerPoler]

I don’t moderate this forum winemaker - I’m on the Africa, Middle East & Bizjet forums.
Been moderating them for around 25 years now.
Africa & the Middle East are my back yard. Hence my concern and request for oversight. When I say “shut it down” I don’t mean close the shop, I mean institute a safety shutdown. I have to snigger when I read first-world pundits like Equivocal (who writes extremely well) suggesting a low-cost Egyptian airline conduct their own internal investigation. Clearly the learned gentleman has little to no exposure to Egyptian aviation ethics and morals, notably on the low-cost end of the line. What a hoot!

So by all means, jump on your moral bandwagons and chastise me for being overbearing in my concern and judgment. I will reserve my right to remain significantly concerned that when a low-cost Egyptian airline has 3 landing gear issues in one week in European locations that the holes in the cheese are lining up and bells should be ringing.

[Alt Flieger]

I have many hours on the B737 and have only seen blown tyres on two occasions in my airline.
One incident a high speed reject at max. T/O weight.
Another with a mishandled Anti-skid Inop. Landing.
Otherwise its very , very hard to blow tyres on a 737.
I’d be looking at maintenance or dispatch with an MEL issue.

[Post Flight]

After many thousand hours PIC on the 737, I never experienced any of these problems. Nor earlier on the 727. Focus on the common denominators and go from there.

[Uplinker]

Some may jump on me for speculating.

Perhaps someone, somewhere is supplying "scrapyard" components from old airframes, which then fail?

Or it could be an engineering problem - perhaps the tyre pressure gauge they use is faulty and the tyres are being under-inflated, causing overheating and failure. Or they are setting the wrong pressure for other reasons.

The first two incidents could have been caused by under-inflated tyres. The last one suggests a braking problem to me, so probably unrelated - unless the treads of all four tyres were worn below the limits?

[Yeehaw22]

Wonder if these aircraft have been parked up somewhere for a decent amount of time throughout the pandemic somewhere hot and sunny with out covers fitted? UV degradation maybe?

[Avman]

From what I could glean both SU-TMJ and TMM had only spent a short period in storage between March and July in 2020. Both were certainly fairly active during 2021.

[DaveReidUK]

Uplinker

It's rare for an under-inflated tyre to cause the two halves of a wheel to separate,

[aeromech3]

Wizofoz wrote :"Always thought it odd you could set the park-brake of a 737 in flight- i mean; what could go wrong?"
As far as I can remember on the -200 B737 the park brake was just a latching mechanism and the anti-skid was designed to protect the likely hood of a pilot landing with feet on the brakes, via a spin up channel, the anti skid would not necessarily know if the brakes were foot operated or latched; I am sure this safeguard exists on the more modern versions of the B737 and most airliners.
Outside of a crash landing, I have never heard of two halves of a bolted wheel separating, all the bolts would need to shear and the axle nut go missing; flange failures yes (L1011 Flt 162) and especially in 1950-60's flanged magnesium wheels which were another story.

[anson harris]

Ahh, how typical - Anson & Co moderating the moderators. Talk about objectivity!


I'm not sure why you think that either this is typical of me or why I lack objectivity in this specific example?
But, you know, I think I shall join the ranks of the multitudes of professional pilots who have departed this website to focus on the azure skies, without being troubled by the opinions of armchair experts. This thread neatly summarises why.

[Uplinker]

It's rare for an under-inflated tyre to cause the two halves of a wheel to separate,

It is rare for two halves of a wheel to separate full stop! What on Earth could have caused that?

I was thinking: soft tyre - heavy landing - soft tyre cannot cushion shock - wheel hits ground hard - rim separates. But highly improbable, I grant you.

So what then would have caused a rim to break off.......badly corroded wheel? A cheap refurbished wheel reassembled incorrectly with the wrong bolts, or re-using the old bolts, or torqued incorrectly perhaps?

My suspicion is a maintenance issue in some form.

[HOVIS]

Locked door

Not exactly correct.
The first few were due to the wheel bearings packed with the wrong grease.
The last one, was due to the wheel being dipped in solvent to degrease it before assembly. The sintered heat shield within the wheel acted like a sponge and soaked it up. Usually after assembly, the wheel would go in to stores for a while and the solvent would evaporate. On this occasion the wheel came straight from the workshop and was fitted on the line before the aircraft operated to MAN.

[DaveReidUK]

Uplinker

"It is rare for two halves of a wheel to separate full stop! What on Earth could have caused that?

I was thinking: soft tyre - heavy landing - soft tyre cannot cushion shock - wheel hits ground hard - rim separates. But highly improbable, I grant you.

So what then would have caused a rim to break off.......badly corroded wheel? A cheap refurbished wheel reassembled incorrectly with the wrong bolts, or re-using the old bolts, or torqued incorrectly perhaps?

My suspicion is a maintenance issue in some form."

I would agree.

And if so - depending on whether or not FlyEgypt overhauls its own wheels - it may turn out to be grossly unfair to point the finger at the operator at all, in respect of the first incident.

[Saintsman]

If there is indeed a problem, then there will be three more tyre incidents next week!

[B Fraser]

I remember that the PIA wheel fire incidents caused a few injuries to the fire crews called to deal with the flames. The slides were deployed and the fire crews stood at the bottom to assist the evacuating passengers. The problem was the combination of many of the older women being errrrr..... "big boned" and wearing silk. Unfortunately, silk has a rather low friction coefficient so they arrived at the bottom of the slide travelling considerably faster than anticipated. Due to good old half M V squared, a number of fireman required medical attention..

[Equivocal]

When I say “shut it down” I don’t mean close the shop, I mean institute a safety shutdown.And what, exactly, is a safety shutdown? And how does it differ from 'closing the shop'?

I have to snigger when I read first-world pundits like Equivocal (who writes extremely well) suggesting a low-cost Egyptian airline conduct their own internal investigation. Clearly the learned gentleman has little to no exposure to Egyptian aviation ethics and morals, notably on the low-cost end of the line. What a hoot!Whilst I don't wish to make this personal, it's good to know that I brought some humour to your day. Surprising as it might seem, I do have some exposure to ME aviation having been involved in supporting a State very nearby to improve some of its working methods. And I don't underestimate that there is a good way to go for some States and operators to implement good and effective safety practices. But here's the thing, even a long journey starts with a single step - a knee-jerk reaction of 'shut them down', even if it is watered-down in later posts, does not contribute to any progress or change any of the majority mindsets. If Africa and the ME are your back yard, I fear that you may well be part of the problem that you claim you are so concerned about.

So by all means, jump on your moral bandwagons and chastise me for being overbearing in my concern and judgment. I will reserve my right to remain significantly concerned that when a low-cost Egyptian airline has 3 landing gear issues in one week in European locations that the holes in the cheese are lining up and bells should be ringing.I don't think anyone here is arguing that there is not an issue that requires attention, but whether the fact that a low-cost carrier has been involved in all three events, or that all three events took place in Europe, or any of the other factors that might have gone through your mind, are indicative of a serious problem with the operator, or the State of operator, or the quality of regulatory oversight, cannot be determined without further, objective investigation. Then you might know where the holes are, and which slices of the cheese are involved.

[FMS82]

You literally write "shut this airline down" in your opening post, even though you later try to water it down.

​​​​​​What happened to first figuring out what is causing this in the first place.... Axe to grind with this particular operator? Sure reads like it
​​​​

[4HolerPoler]

I’ve never heard of, or had anything to do with Flyegypt. I certainly have no plans to ever engage their services. Any airline which has 3 related incidents in 1 week needs to be investigated. Urgently. That’s all I’m saying. You are welcome you maintain a liberal and tolerant stance.

[hunbet]

The only thing related is it is one airline and tires other than that there is no relation to those failures.

Lost cap from a tire, broken rim, flat spotted tires.

[Sam Asama]

Let us know when you're prepared to show us the results of your investigation into the root cause(s) of these events and their contributing factors. Until then you have no more justification for saying they are unrelated than those who suggest they are.

[hunbet]

How about the fact I was a Mechanic for Western Airlines one of the airlines that placed an order for the 1st 737-200,s and worked on 737's for 41 years.

I have seen all of those results and know the reason.

[Sam Asama]

With respect, and despite your vast experience, if you joined an aircraft accident investigation team and said "I've seen all those results and know the reason", you'd be the laughing stock -- among a team that has as much experience, or more, than you. In essence -- so you understand what an accident investigation tries to achieve -- you may indeed be exactly correct in the end about what happened, but that Sir, is not what an investigation is about. The "why" will be different each time, though some investigators, for example, would be looking more deeply at the potential of corporate organizational factors, or resources, or training, or corporate culture as root cause contributors when faced with several incidents at one organization in a short time frame.

I'm done here.

[DaveReidUK]

I think the most that can be said is that, based on the information available so far, 3 distinct and different failure modes occurred in a short space of time.

Whether or not, further back along the causality chain, there turn out to be contributory factors in common between the events is currently unknown.

Given that there doesn't seem to have been any announcement by either the Egyptian AIB or regulator that they are investigating a potential connection between the three events, we may never know the answer.

[hunbet]

"I think the most that can be said is that, based on the information available so far, 3 distinct and different failure modes occurred in a short space of time."

Thank you for explaining what I meant to say.

In my experience a tire that loses a recap or blows out is investigated by the manufacturer of the carcass. It's routine .
It happens often enough that it doesn't require a major investigation.

I've seen 4 broken rims.

Flat spotted tire are usually caused by the tires hydroplaning and not coming up to the minimum speed to allow the anti-skid to be active. I remember a day when I explained that to a pilot and when he questioned me I showed him 3 737-200's a adjacent gates all with flat spotted tires.

[Clandestino]

Since Egyptair's B738 has blown both nosegear tyres at Madinah (https://avherald.com/h?article=4ef371be&opt=0), methinks certain HECA based nitrogen tanks should be checked for their actual content.

[fdr]

Maybe.

randomness is the way of the universe, and patterns that we are genetically programmed to search for, as are our SMS systems a la Doc 9859 AN/474 and our most revered teachings by the maters of linear causation, and of tasty cheese repurposing, Emmentaler, Gouda etc... The sad fact is the universe is stochastic, it doesn't follow much in a linear fashion, and while we put emphaisis on the past being a predictor of the future, well, that only is true to a limited extent. Ukraine shootdown didn't predict a B772ER loss 6 months later; 447 didnt glean much about it's future from 358, or 4590. 587 didn't gain much from 585, or 427. We are great at matrix, QA checklists and other accoutrements of the advanced safety systems we have developed, and they just ain't so.

Our safety would be better served by enhancing SA increasing displays and alerting systems, and teaching crews more on recognition of SA loss, and SA recovery techniques.

It is slightly specious, but Niels Bohr's comment " "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." sums up the difference between a linear causation as ICAO, FAA, etc espouse, vs functional resonance and stochastic system behaviour, which is how the world really is.

Change doesn't have to be expensive; my jets use systems that were old when Armstong was kicking sand in a far off sandpit, yet my iPad, which gives head down synthetic vision with terrain awareness, HITS, and 3D traffic vision is only acceptable to the extent that it doesn't interfere with... what, a black and white FMSCDU display?

odd world we live in.

PS: Swiss cheese says more about the CO2 bubble formation in a lactose product than it does safety. lining up of "holes" happens in storybooks, not the universe we inhabit in the myriad of the multiverse. If you imagine a wave-particle (LMAO! ) behaviour around a slit of your philosophy's linear model, then you start to approach the non-linear functions that occur in the universe. Imagine that your rules cause a change to the vector of your "hole piercer" problem, that is, when manglement raise another incessant policy change, they act to change the path of all, a "butterfly effect" if you must. The crew then cope with a new reality caused by the changes in the policy, but that affects all, not just one slice of predrilled pecorino or parmesan. Linear models make bureaucrats happy as it simplifies their ticking of box solutions, but it doesn't meaningfully alter the likelihood of a future calamity. Things have improved, training, systems, and alerting have improved; TCAS, weather forecasting, hardware reliability, nav system accuracy... etc, so things are getting better. CRM? sometimes, but we don't teach SA and we spend little time on developing NDM heuristics, in fact, we essentially suppress the conditions where new crew gain such heuristics.

[VR-HFX]

Simple question...have these a/c been sitting idle in the desert for extended periods during the pandemic lockdowns?

[DaveReidUK]

The aircraft involved in the Cluj incident had been back in service for a week, following a couple of months parked and/or on maintenance.

The other two had been flying pretty well continuously throughout the year.