United Airlines Boeing Plane Loses Wheel After Takeoff

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Facts

  • A United Airlines plane flying from Los Angeles, Calif., to Denver, Colo., Monday lost one of its wheels while taking off. The wheel landed on a car in an employee parking lot, but there were no injuries.1
  • United said the Boeing 757-200 plane, carrying 174 passengers and seven crewmembers, continued its flight and landed safely in Denver. It added that the aircraft has six tires on each of its landing gear struts and is designed to land with damaged or missing tires.2
  • The 757-200 aircraft involved in this incident was around 30 years old, and Boeing stopped producing the model in 2004.3
  • This follows a similar United flight incident in March, during which the wheel of a Boeing 777-200 — carrying 249 people from San Francisco, Calif., to Japan — lost a wheel during takeoff and was rerouted to Los Angeles for an inspection.4
  • Additionally, in March, a United plane landing in Houston rolled off the tarmac and into the grass.3
  • Boeing has faced several other issues in recent years, including a door plug falling off of an Alaska Airlines plane in January. A Boeing airplane also crashed in Indonesia in 2018, killing 189 people, and in Ethiopia in 2019, killing 157.4

Sources: 1NBC, 2FOX News, 3Guardian and 4Gizmodo.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by HeraldNet.com. The majority of recent flight failures have involved Boeing planes, and the whole world now knows why. A little over a century ago, Bill Boeing built a plane company that emphasized quality over quantity, but those in charge today have drifted away from that philosophy. Boeing, aided by ineffective federal regulators, has gotten off scot-free too many times, and it must put in the necessary work to regain public trust.
  • Narrative B, as provided by Business Insider. While Boeing has received much well-deserved criticism over its recent manufacturing errors, United Airlines cannot shift all the blame away from its own safety practices. Considering that several of the planes in question were decades old — meaning they've been under the care of the airline, not the original manufacturer — the issues ranging from fallen wheels to broken wings are the responsibility of United Airlines' internal inspectors.

Predictions