A wheel detached from the nose of a Boeing 757 airliner as it was preparing for takeoff in Atlanta on Saturday — the latest in a series of high-profile safety incidents and concerns that have troubled the aircraft manufacturer in recent weeks.
Delta Air Lines Flight 982 was taxiing on the runway at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, heading to Bogota, Colombia, when the nose wheel came off just after 11 a.m., a spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration said.
“One of your nose tires just came off, it just rolled off the runway behind you,” a pilot in a neighboring plane was heard informing the Delta plane’s cockpit, according to an audio recording obtained by ABC News.
The plane, which the FAA reported was carrying 184 passengers and crew, was evacuated and the passengers were put on a replacement aircraft, a Delta spokesperson said Wednesday.
No one was injured and the aircraft was “re-tired and placed back into service the next day.” The event remains under investigation, the spokesperson said in an email to HuffPost.
The 757 aircraft is an older model whose production was discontinued in 2004. The 757 that lost its wheel in Atlanta was acquired in 1992, making it around 32 years old, Delta told Reuters. Civil airplanes typically have a 20 to 25-year economic life, but can be flown longer up to certain limits, per the Reuters report.
The incident comes amid heightened safety inspections of Boeing aircraft after part of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet’s fuselage blew out mid-flight earlier this month. Alaska and United Airlines have since said that they’ve found loose bolts and other installation issues with the model, which has been grounded by the FAA since the Jan. 5 scare.
“We don’t put planes in the air that we don’t have 100% confidence in,” Boeing CEO Dave…
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