Another United Airlines Boeing jet loses landing gear wheel during take off

Another Boeing jet operated by United Airlines lost its main landing gear wheel while taking off on Monday, in a similar incident to a flight in March that helped trigger a federal safety review.

There were no reports of injuries among people on the ground or the 174 passengers and seven crew on United flight 1001, Bloomberg cited a airline spokesman as saying.

The Boeing 757-200 took off from Los Angeles at 7.16am local time and landed at Denver International Airport at 10.10am

The Federal Aviation Administration said it is investigating the incident.

The wheel was found in Los Angeles, United said.

There are four wheels on each of the plane’s two main landing gears.

In March, another United aircraft lost a wheel shortly after taking off from San Francisco on a flight to Osaka in Japan.

The Boeing 777-200, with 249 people on board, was diverted to Los Angeles International Airport where it landed safely. No one was injured, but videos on X by RadarBox captured the moment the wheel fell. It damaged vehicles in a car park.

The FAA began a broad safety review of the airline after a series of headline-grabbing incidents over several weeks, including the earlier lost wheel, an aircraft running off a Houston runway and a fuselage piece also coming loose in flight.

Last month, a United plane returned to a Connecticut airport after losing part of a liner from inside an engine cover. On Sunday, a United plane bound for Guam returned to Nagoya’s international airport in Japan after detecting a system malfunction, Kyodo News reported.

There were no injuries among the 44 passengers and six crew members.

United also said it is investigating the latest incident.

Boeing woes pile on

Boeing has found itself in hot water with several incidents involving its jets in the past few quarters. Earlier this year, a door plug detached mid-flight on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max plane, which prompted the FAA to temporarily ground about 170 of the 737-9 Max planes.

Earlier this week, the US plane manufacturer said it would pay a fine of $243.6 million to resolve the US Justice Department’s investigation into two fatal 737 Max crashes.

The company has also agreed to spend $455 million over the next three years to improve its compliance and safety programmes and must hire an independent monitor to oversee the improvements, according to a court filing on Sunday.

The FAA on Monday also mandated inspections of 2,600 Boeing 737 aeroplanes because passenger oxygen masks could fail during an emergency due to a retention strap, according to Reuters.

The FAA said is requiring the inspections of 737 Max and Next Generation after multiple reports of passenger service unit oxygen generators shifting out of position, an issue that could result in an inability to provide supplemental oxygen to passengers during a depressurisation event.

On Monday, Boeing said it had told airlines to update a subset of the restraining straps on 737 oxygen generators after a new adhesive introduced on the straps in August 2019 had been seen under certain circumstances to allowed units to shift up to three quarters of an inch.

“We have gone back to the original adhesive for all new deliveries to ensure the generators remain firmly in place, as intended,” Reuters cited Boeing as saying.