A United Airlines Boeing jet lost a main landing gear wheel Monday while taking off from Los Angeles, the airline said. The Boeing 757-200 was carrying 174 passengers and 7 crewmembers.
In another scary aviation incident, a United Airlines jet lost a landing-gear wheel seconds after taking off from Los Angeles on Monday. The flight was manufactured by Boeing– a firm which has been facing multiple scrutiny following severe security issues. According to the airline, the flight landed safely in Denver, its planned destination, with no injuries. The wheel from United Flight 1001, a Boeing 757-200, was recovered in Los Angeles. “We are investigating what caused this event,” United said. The incident was caught on camera which eventually went viral on social media platforms. The airline was carrying 174 passengers and seven crew.
30-year-old aircraft
The aircraft involved in Monday’s incident was a nearly 30-year-old 757, according to FlightRadar24 data. Boeing ended production of the 757 in 2004. In March, a United Boeing 777-200 jet headed for Japan lost a tyre mid-air following takeoff from San Francisco and landed safely at Los Angeles International Airport. It landed on a car in an airport employee parking lot. Nobody was hurt.
Notably, the incident coincided on the next day when Boeing agreed to a guilty plea to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge and pay a fine of $243.6 million to resolve a US Justice Department investigation into two 737 MAX fatal crashes, the government said in a court filing on Sunday. The plea deal, which requires a judge’s approval, would brand the planemaker a convicted felon in connection with crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia over a five-month period in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
Boeing under intense scrutiny for poor safety management
A panel blew off a new Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet during a January 5 Alaska Airlines flight, just two days before the 2021 deferred agreement that had shielded the company from prosecution over the previous fatal crashes expired. Boeing faces a separate ongoing criminal probe into the Alaska Airlines incident. The agreement only covers Boeing’s conduct before the fatal crashes and does not shield the planemaker from any other potential investigations or charges related to the January incident or other conduct. The deal also does not shield any executives, the DOJ filing said, though charges against individuals are seen as unlikely due to the statute of limitations. A former Boeing chief technical pilot was charged in connection with the Boeing fraud agreement but acquitted by a jury in 2022.
The agreed penalty will be Boeing’s second fine of $243.6 million related to the fatal crashes — bringing the full fine to the maximum allowed. The company paid the fine previously as part of 2021’s $2.5 billion settlement. The $243.6 million fine represented the amount Boeing saved by not implementing full-flight simulator training for MAX pilots. Families of the victims last month pressed the Justice Department to seek as much as $25 billion. The DOJ and Boeing are working to document the full written plea agreement and file it in federal court in Texas by July 19, the DOJ said in the court filing.