An American Airlines jet had a pretty dramatic rejected takeoff at Tampa Airport, and it makes for a great video…
Continue reading: American 737 Rejects Takeoff At High Speed Due To Burst Tires
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
As a retired airline pilot, if I have the runway ahead, every time I would reject the takeoff and I did in the simulator. The potential is taking a burning wheel into the wheel well, which has happened before with catastrophic results.
It is still a matter of judgement based on what your environmental and physical situation is perceived.
Would never happen on Delta. All their aircrafts use tires built for the space shuttle.
I'm not a pilot, just a long time avgeek and engineer and you expressed my initial thoughts upon reading the aforementioned Monday mooring quarterbacking. The last thing you want is a hot fire in the wheel wells. That has ended horribly on more than one occasion.
When I watched this I was wondering at what point do you evacuate the passengers via slides? The plane was on fire, right under the fuel tanks, and it all ended fine, but easily could not have. My guess is that the pilot didn't know about the fire because they can't see down there, and that is 100% understandable and I assume that is the answer as to why they didn't evacuate the passengers, but maybe I'm missing something else? Can a pilot weigh in on this? If they had known that the fire was going on would that create an evacuating situation or was it still wiser to keep everyone in the aircraft?
@Ben. This is another example of a childish, immature comment that adds nothing of value to your blog. It is obviously a fraudulent account. Your blog is better than this. Please delete these comments and profiles.
In this day and age when I can have tiny low-cost video cameras and trained on every part of my property (and access them from my phone), why is it that pilots, such as those in this case, remain blind? Why isn't video of every part of the aircraft available in the cockpit? In this case, one glance would have told them they were on fire, and I imagine they would have acted differently.
Many modern widebody aircraft have this as an option. It's typically the same camera passengers can see through the IFE if the aircraft has it. Pilots can have the same video feed play on their screens in the cockpit with a push of a button. I don't know if it is an option on the 737/A320 though. So, I agree with you that this should be a feature on all aircraft in this day and age.
I don't know whether Boeing or a subcontractor built that right main strut, but it held up under remarkable forces and then a brake fire to boot. "Good" on the manufacturer whoever it was,
I used to take this flight weekly after visiting GF while we were in college. Scary
@Michael Congratulations! You correctly identified a 737 as a Boeing product! The majority of commercial planes flying in the US are Boeing. Almost every accident that occurs on a US commercial flight is going to be on a Boeing or Airbus aircraft. That doesn't itself mean there's a fault with the design or manufacturing.
People are right when they say above 80kts you would not reject for a blown tire………the pilots did not reject because of the blown tire
@everyone in this thread who is concerned about a flaming wheel being brought into the wheel well... did you pause to consider NOT raising the gear? It's not mandated that after rotating you have to raise the gear. Rotate-> leave the gear down (tower can tell you if they're on fire or not) -> stay below max gear extended airspeed (vle on the A320 is approx 280 kts) ->circle back around and land on the same runway (and you'll have more runway to stop with = less brakes required, reducing the chance of a fire on the ground)
Multiple things can be true here:
1) Great job by the crew to maintain safety of the flight and passengers.
2) In most cases, the second commenter ben hilighted is 100% correct. As you accelerate down the runway for takeoff, the items that you would reject a takeoff for narrow depending on airspeed. Below 80 kts =low speed, and aborting following a burst tire is 100% acceptable. Above 80 kts = high speed and reject-able items narrow down to direct safety of flight concerns (flight control system malfunction, or complete engine failure). There have been a lot of accidents where flight crew rejected for a burst tire, which resulted in runway excursions and passenger injuries when it was perfectly acceptable to takeoff, leave the gear down, and circle back around.
This worked out for the crew because of the length of the runways at Tampa. If this were on a 5-7k foot runway, and pilots rejected in the high speed regime for a burst tire, the outcome could have been a lot worse.
The other thing I'd like to point out is an area that still needs improvement from an aviation safety perspective: How are the pilots supposed to know it was a burst tire? The brake temps page isn't available (the engine indication page is active). The decision has to be made in .1 seconds and, to my knowledge, there isn't a clear cut way to tell "oh that's a blown tire." You are looking at engine's N1, N2, EGT, etc. So they should know that the engines are working, but not much beyond that.
All in all, good job on the crew, but this is an area that needs improvement in the aviation safety area.
High speed rejected take off is risky, but they had plenty of extra runway in front of them. I would have taken off, but that’s because “my book” said so. The Air France Concorde did “the right thing”, but crashed regardless. If they had aborted their take off, they just might have survived. That is a very tough call, so well done, gentlemen!
In an ideal world, when the passengers on board saw the flames (which one said they could) they would notify a Flight Attendant, and the Flight Attendant would relay the information to the cockpit, and then the pilots would have a more complete picture.
Have this guy pee on those wheels!
In an aftermath of an emergency there's usually no shortage of people telling you what they feel you did wrong and how you should have handled it. People who weren't there.