A hand-held cameraman recording takeoffs at the Tampa International Airport caught sight of a worrying moment on video on Wednesday July 10 as smoke poured out from beneath a Boeing 737-800 operated by American Airlines.
The smoke, it turns out was spooling off a tire that blew during the airplane’s takeoff run as the flight was departing for Phoenix, Arizona’s Sky Harbor International Airport. American Airlines officials, and officials with the Federal Aviation Administration officials, confirmed the incident, adding that the aircraft was carrying six crew members and one hundred seventy-four passengers at the time.
The video of the incident show the plane taxiing along the tarmac with flames and smoke billowing from the right side of its landing gear. Sparks appeared to fly from the point of contact between the rim and the runway, and tire fragments bounced in the plane’s wake. In the video, camera operator Steven Markovich, himself an airline pilot, can be heard yelling for emergency crews when the tire blows. He calls out an alert for the fire and shouts that there was gonna be “stuff all over the runway,” which would put that stretch of tarmac out of service until it could be swept clean.
According to American Airlines, all passengers safely de-boarded the plane after it came to a stop, and were taken on buses back to the terminal. Spokespeople for the airline emphasized that the safety and travel plans of their customers is their highest priority, and it deeply regrets the incident and any disruption it caused to the customers’ itineraries. The aircraft, said the airline, was suffering from a “mechanical issue,” and that the Federal Aviation Administration is conducting an investigation into the incident. Fortunately, nobody was injured as a result of the incident.
This is the latest in an unremitting worldwide string of issues affecting primarily Boeing aircraft since the beginning of this year. FAA investigations continue into quality control issues at Boeing-affiliated assembly plants.