Summary
- A United Airlines Boeing 737-900ER suffered a tire blowout during takeoff from Denver on August 24.
- The aircraft landed safely at its destination airport, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA).
- However, since the incident, the 737-900ER has remained with SEA.
A United Airlines Boeing 737-900ER lost a tire during takeoff from a flight from Denver to Seattle in the USA. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed the incident, which occurred on August 24.
Burst tire
An entry in the FAA’s Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) report stated that a United Airlines 737-900ER aircraft with the registration N37427 experienced a landing gear tire blowout on August 24.
Photo: Robin Guess | Shutterstock
The file, released on August 26, did not contain any information on the number of pilots, flight attendants or passengers on board the plane.
However, the FAA stated that the incident occurred during the takeoff phase of United Airlines flight UA759.
Landing in Seattle
According to data from Flightradar24, the 737-900ER left Denver International Airport (DEN) on August 24 at 15:54 local time (UTC-6).
After leaving DEN, the aircraft climbed to a maximum altitude of 30,000 feet (9,144 m), descended to 26,000 feet (7,924 m) as it crossed Wyoming, and then climbed back to that altitude halfway through Idaho.
But just before the United Airlines crew began its descent to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), where there is an ongoing outage due to a possible cyberattack, the 737-900ER entered a holding pattern at an altitude of 26,000 feet (7,924 m).
Photo: Ronen Fefer | Shutterstock
After entering the holding pattern immediately southeast of SEA at 16:58 local time (UTC -7), the aircraft began descending toward the target at 17:20 and simultaneously exited the holding pattern.
Finally, the 737-900ER landed in SEA at 5:43 p.m. The plane briefly remained on the runway where it landed before finally reaching the gate area at 6:11 p.m., the flight tracking website says.
During the entire incident, the flight crew never once dialled the number 7700, which would have indicated a general emergency on board the aircraft.
Stay at the airport
Since the incident on August 24, the 737-900ER has not flown outside of SEA, Flightradar24 tracking showed. The day of the incident was the aircraft’s fourth flight.
According to data from Ch-aviation, Boeing delivered the 737-900ER to Continental Airlines on August 28, 2008; United Airlines is now equipping the aircraft with 114 economy, 45 premium economy and 20 business class seats, giving the narrow-body jet a total of 179 seats.
Photo: Robin Guess | Shutterstock
Ownership of the aircraft was transferred from Continental Airlines to United Airlines when the two airlines merged in the early 2010s.
As of April 30, the aircraft had completed 49,358 flight hours (FH) and 17,342 flight cycles (FC), with ch-aviation citing Boeing data. The website estimated that the aircraft would have accumulated another 808.33 FHs and 316 FCs over the next three months.
