United Airlines Boeing plane loses wheel
during take-off in L.A.
A Boeing jet operated by United Airlines lost a landing gear wheel during take-off from Los Angeles on Monday morning — the second reported wheel loss incident for the airline this year.
The Boeing 757-200 jet was just beginning a journey to Denver, Colo. when the wheel dropped from the aircraft and plummeted downward over the Los Angeles International Airport.
The incident was captured on camera by the YouTube channel Cali Planes, which regularly livestreams aircraft landings and departures from various airports.
There were no injuries reported by the 174 passengers and seven crew members onboard Flight 1001, according to a United Airlines statement to The Washington Post.
The jet was able to make a safe landing upon arrival in Denver.
United Airlines is investigating the incident. The wheel has been recovered.
In March, a United Airlines flight en route to Osaka, Japan from San Francisco also lost a wheel during take-off. No one was injured and the plane landed safely. The wheel from the Boeing 777-200 landed on the San Francisco runway before bouncing into an employee parking lot where it damaged several cars.
Boeing incidents like these have continued to make international headlines this year as the company battles bad press.
Several whistleblowers have come forward with complaints about Boeing in recent months, leading to the company being sanctioned by U.S. investigators in June. American officials said the corporation violated investigative regulations to do with possible causes of a door plug blowout that left a gaping hole in a Boeing 737 Max 9 in January.
Last week, a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner operated by Air Europa made an emergency stop in Brazil after severe turbulence injured more than 30 people on Monday, fracturing the necks and skulls of several passengers.
Despite increased reports of Boeing-related incidences and wavering consumer trust, experts still say flying is safe. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), commercial aircraft accidents have been on the decline in recent years.
Of course, air travel has been on the decline, at least during the Covid years.
Is their confidence deserved, is it bravado? Will they volunteer for the next mission?
Starliner astronauts in good spirits, ‘confident’ they’ll return to Earth safely
The astronauts aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft are confident they’ll get back to Earth safely aboard the vessel, despite weeks of malfunctions and glitches that have left them stuck in space much longer than expected.
Test pilots Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore appeared in a NASA-hosted livestream Wednesday from the International Space Station (ISS) looking happy and healthy. They were chipper as they answered reporters’ questions.
“We’ve been through a lot of simulations for this spacecraft to go through all sorts of iterations and failures, and I think where we are right now and what we know right now … I feel confident,” Williams said, next to his crewmate and in front of a U.S. flag.
“I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will bring us home, no problem. I feel confident that if we had to — if there was a problem with the International Space Station — we’d get in our spacecraft, undock, talk to our team and figure out the best way to come home,” said Williams, her hair comedically splayed out above her amid the lack of gravity.
It was their first news conference while in orbit, and the pair said they expect to return to Earth once thruster testing is complete, although they did not give a timeline or date.
But they’re not complaining about getting to spend extra time in space, and said they’re having a good time helping the crew aboard the ISS, as well as running science experiments and tests while in orbit.
Wilmore said they went into the mission knowing there would be kinks, saying, “This is the world of test. This is a tough business.”
“Human spaceflight is not easy in any regime, and there have been multiple issues with every spacecraft that’s ever been designed, and that’s just the nature of what we do,” Wilmore said. “You know that mantra, ‘Failure is not an option.'”
The astronauts even did a little bit of zero-gravity physical comedy to prove they’re in good spirits, with Williams doing backflips to close out the livestream, as Wilmore laughed.
It’s the inaugural crewed flight for the Boeing-built Starliner, a massively over-budget project that’s been plagued by setbacks and delays from the beginning.
But listening to Wilmore’s praise for the vehicle, you would have no idea that this particular flight has been in space for weeks longer than expected, nor that it has suffered from failed docking attempts, multiple helium leaks, thruster issues and more.
“Launch was spectacular. I mean, truly amazing,” Wilmore said in Wednesday’s briefing. “And then we got into our operational capabilities checks, and the spacecraft performed unbelievably well.”
He addressed the fact that he had to take manual control of the craft at one point, when several thrusters failed as the Starliner approached its docking port at the ISS.
“Thankfully, we had practiced and we had gotten certified for manual control, and so we took over manual control for over an hour,” Wilmore said.
At a second briefing Wednesday, this time from officials at NASA and Boeing, they said the Starliner teams are also conducting tests on the ground in New Mexico, which will wrap up this weekend. The testing plans have faced a “hiccup” in the form of Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall with the southern U.S. earlier this week.
Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said on Wednesday that the “big driver” for timing is getting the astronauts home before the SpaceX Crew-9 mission arrives with more astronauts in August.
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NASA says astronauts stuck at space station until troubled Boeing capsule can be fixed
NASA has yet to fix a return date for its two astronauts at the International Space Station, who have now been stuck there for more than a month due to technical issues with the Boeing-manufactured Starliner capsule intended to bring them back to Earth. The new spacecraft experienced thruster failures and helium leaks upon docking at the ISS in early June. The US space agency says it is also reviewing backup return options including using SpaceX's Dragon capsule.
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Already more than a month late getting back, two NASA astronauts will remain at the International Space Station until engineers finish working on problems plaguing their Boeing capsule, officials said Thursday.
Test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to visit the orbiting lab for about a week and return in mid-June, but thruster failures and helium leaks on Boeing's new Starliner capsule prompted NASA and Boeing to keep them up longer.
NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said mission managers are not ready to announce a return date. The goal is to bring Wilmore and Williams back aboard Starliner, he added.
“We'll come home when we're ready,” Stich said.
Stich acknowledged that backup options are under review. SpaceX's Dragon capsule is another means of getting NASA astronauts to and from the space station.“NASA always has contingency options," he said.
Engineers last week completed testing on a spare thruster in the New Mexico desert and will rip it apart to try to understand what went wrong ahead of the Starliner's docking. Five thrusters failed as the capsule approached the space station on June 6, a day after liftoff. Four have since been reactivated.
It appears degraded seals are to blame for the helium leaks and thruster problems — entirely separate issues — but more analysis is needed. The team will test-fire the capsule's thrusters this weekend while docked to the space station to gather more data, said Boeing’s Mark Nappi.
Each of the 28 maneuvering thrusters can fit in a hand and weighs 2 pounds (1 kilogram). The capsule is also outfitted with bigger engines for dropping out of orbit at flight's end. All these are part of a segment that is discarded before landing, which means nothing to study for future flights.
After the space shuttles retired, NASA hired private companies for astronaut rides to the space station, paying Boeing and SpaceX billions of dollars.
This was the Boeing's first test flight with a crew aboard. The initial demo in 2019, flying empty, never made it to the space station because of bad software, and Boeing repeated the test in 2022. More issues later cropped up.
SpaceX has been ferrying astronauts since 2020. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets have been grounded for the past two weeks because of an upper-stage failure on a satellite-delivery mission. The longer the stand-down continues, the more likely upcoming crew flights will be delayed.
(AP)
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