FAA investigating after tires pop on 3 flights at O'Hare
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CHICAGO (WBBM) — The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating after three different planes landing or taking off at O’Hare had tires blown out in just one week.
The FAA says all three incidents happened on different runways, everyone was evacuated, and no one was hurt.
It started with a United Airlines flight taking off to Phoenix last Thursday. Then, on Monday, another United flight popped a tire after landing, but just about three hours before, an American Airlines flight blew two tires after it touched down.
Passenger Steven Hill was on that flight.
“All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was a loud bang and after that we heard, more instead of a smooth rolling noise, we heard a thump, thump, thump, thump,” he said.
He says no one panicked, but they sat inside their seats for about 30 or 40 minutes.
“I was most nervous about just being sitting there on an active runway and knowing that anything could happen.”
Eventually, all the passengers were taken down a flight of stairs, boarded onto buses and drove to the terminal.
“It makes me wonder if it’s the tires or something on the taxiway or who knows,” Hill said.
CBS News travel expert Peter Greenberg says it’s not unusual for airplanes to get a flat. He said he’s had planes land and blow tires.
“In this situation, it’s a combination of the temperature at the airport, the wear and tear on the tire and the weight of the plane,” he said.
Greenberg says that, with it being peak summer travel months, airplanes may be at their max takeoff weight, tires may be worn down or even defective, but says that’s unlikely.
“They are going to be going back to look, first of all, at the manufacturing records, but also the maintenance records as to when those tires were last rotated, literally rotated and retreaded,” he said.
For people with a flight coming up, he says they shouldn’t worry.
“They should be interested, I’m interested, I want to know what happened, but if you give it the idea of 47,000 planes in the air today and not much happened, I’ll go with that.”
If the FAA finds there is a systemic problem with the tires, Greenberg says the National Transportation Safety Board has the power to ground a lot of planes until they are replaced.
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