A plane taking off for Japan lost a tire, which fell to the ground and damaged several vehicles in a parking lot at San Francisco International Airport on Thursday morning.
No one was injured.
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Doug Yakel, a public information officer for the airport, wrote in an email that United Airlines Flight 35 took off for Osaka, Japan; online flight tracking site FlightAware said the plane departed about seven minutes early, at 10:53 a.m. The flight was cut short, Yakel said, when the plane, a Boeing 777-200 twin-jet, lost one of its landing gear tires during takeoff.
According to United Airlines, the twin-jet has six tires on each of its two main landing gear struts. It is designed to land safely with missing or damaged tires.
Photo from video from SKY7 shows a parking lot near SFO, where several cars were damaged by a falling tire from a United flight on Thursday, March 7, 2024.
The tire debris landed in an on-airport employee parking lot, damaging several vehicles, according to Yakel. The plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport at 1:17 p.m.
Almost 250 people were onboard the flight. A new aircraft was scheduled take customers to Osaka at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
A statement by United Airlines read, “We’re grateful to our pilots and flight attendants for their professionalism in managing this situation. We’re also grateful to our teams on the ground who were waiting with a tug to move the aircraft soon after it landed and to our teams in the airport who assisted customers upon their arrival. We will work with customers as well as with the owners of the damaged vehicles in SFO to ensure their needs are addressed.”