United Airlines Boeing jet loses wheel seconds after takeoff — again
A wheel fell off a United Airlines Boeing 757-200 just moments after takeoff Monday morning — echoing a nearly identical incident from March.
Video captured by RadarBox shows the tire coming loose from the aircraft’s undercarriage and plummeting to the ground below a few seconds after takeoff.
United confirmed in a statement that a wheel fell off the jet as Flight 1001 departed Los Angeles International Airport around 7 a.m. on its way to Denver.
The flight safely touched down in Denver about three hours later, and none of the 174 passengers or seven crew members on board were injured.
A United spokesperson says the wheel was later found in Los Angeles, and that it’s investigating the cause of the mishap. It was not immediately known whether it caused any damage on the ground.
The incident is strikingly similarity to another scary incident in March when an Osaka, Japan-bound Boeing 777-200 carrying 249 people lost a wheel just after taking off from San Francisco.
The March flight was diverted to LAX where it landed safely and without injuries. The errant wheel badly damaged some vehicles in an airport parking lot.
Video of that takeoff, also captured by RadarBox, is virtually indistinguishable from Monday’s footage.
Boeing’s reputation is in tatters after years of congressional investigations, lawsuits and damning whistleblower testimony alleging the US aerospace giant routinely skirted safety regulations in the name of maximizing profits.
Just this week Boeing pleaded guilty to criminal fraud stemming from a pair of deadly crashes of 737 MAX jetliners, a deal offered by federal prosecutors allowing the company to avoid standing trial on a felony criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.