Plane in trouble at LAX

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christie1111 · #1 Post by **christie1111** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:21 pm

They said it had a blown tire in it's landing gear and is dumping fuel before making an emergency landing.

CNN.com

Hope it is a safe landing.

sunflower · #2 Post by **sunflower** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:37 pm

I'm kind of confused as to why the plane would return to LAX. If the tire is blown, it will be an emergency landing whenever it lands, but does it impact the flying of the plane?

(By the way that really is a question, I probably don't know enough about planes and am making dumb assumptions)

I would think instead of wasting the fuel and freaking people out you just fly to Toronto (where the plane was headed) and do your emergency landing there. At least then people are where they need to be.

Then again, I don't know anything about the Toronto airport, maybe LAX is where you want to be for something like this due to equipment or manpower or whatever.

christie1111 · #3 Post by **christie1111** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:41 pm

sunflower wrote:I'm kind of confused as to why the plane would return to LAX. If the tire is blown, it will be an emergency landing whenever it lands, but does it impact the flying of the plane?

(By the way that really is a question, I probably don't know enough about planes and am making dumb assumptions)

I would think instead of wasting the fuel and freaking people out you just fly to Toronto (where the plane was headed) and do your emergency landing there. At least then people are where they need to be.

Then again, I don't know anything about the Toronto airport, maybe LAX is where you want to be for something like this due to equipment or manpower or whatever.

Well, you wouldn't want anything else to wrong in transit and then end up at a less than ideal airport.

And they have the longest amount of time to get ready at LAX.

Given the size of the airport, it probably has really good emergency services.

Bob Juch · #4 Post by **Bob Juch** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:47 pm

sunflower wrote:I'm kind of confused as to why the plane would return to LAX. If the tire is blown, it will be an emergency landing whenever it lands, but does it impact the flying of the plane?

(By the way that really is a question, I probably don't know enough about planes and am making dumb assumptions)

I would think instead of wasting the fuel and freaking people out you just fly to Toronto (where the plane was headed) and do your emergency landing there. At least then people are where they need to be.

Then again, I don't know anything about the Toronto airport, maybe LAX is where you want to be for something like this due to equipment or manpower or whatever.

Because they don't know if the blowing tire damaged another part of the aircraft.

sunflower · #5 Post by **sunflower** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 1:56 pm

See this is why I ask...that makes sense.

etaoin22 · #6 Post by **etaoin22** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 5:54 pm

I think Christie has the essence of the answer.

True disasters are usually multifactorial. Once you have potentially serious condition #1, should a second unrelated condition develop, you may be really screwed.

But somebody else really should be confirming or telling me I am full of it , but I thought one blown tire was a purely precautionary return, not true emergency with the airport stood down, ambulances and fire trucks and so on. Light news day, in other words. But you just don't a heavy aircraft to be landing HEAVY, so you fly in circles for a while.

(In any case you'd want the aircraft back at home base and not on foreign soil if it should turn out to require any real work, and if there were costs, like delaying other flights, Toronto would be really really pissed at having to absorb them when you knew about it for three hours. I know enough about organizational behavior to be 100% certain of the last thing...)

christie1111 · #7 Post by **christie1111** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 6:29 pm

Big plane.

Great landing. You wouldn't even guess there was a problem. Well except for the chase fire truck part.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/200 ... ideosearch

Happy ending.

I like that!

marrymeflyfree · #8 Post by **marrymeflyfree** » Tue Sep 02, 2008 6:35 pm

sunflower wrote:I'm kind of confused as to why the plane would return to LAX. If the tire is blown, it will be an emergency landing whenever it lands, but does it impact the flying of the plane?

If the airline has its own maintenance peeps at LAX, that would be a major factor. Landing at the destination airport might be no prob, but using contract mx is never ideal ($$, time), and there may not be the right kind of spare tire. Sometimes the major delays caused by mx are not related to the actual problem, but due to the fact that the spare parts must be flown in. And you don't want to have a plane stuck at an airport that isn't your home turf...

And anyway, if the exact condition of the gear wasn't known, it probably wouldn't be wise to retract it up into the belly and hope it will deploy correctly once you're ready to land. Flying at cruise with the gear down is not great if there are other options. And of course they would take the state of the runways...sometimes they want as much room as possible or the best possible conditions, etc, etc.

Of course no one wants to land with a blown tire, but it's usually a very manageable sort of incident. The firetrucks are just a precaution in case things get too hot when touching down. Looks dramatic, but it isn't really a big deal.