A Delta Air Lines jet maintenance incident reportedly “sent a piece of metal flying like a missile”.
The explosion of a Boeing jet’s tire killed two workers and injured another at Atlanta’s airport on Tuesday, local media has reported.
The Boeing 757-232 jet belonging to Delta Air Lines had been undergoing maintenance at a Delta Technical Operations Maintenance (Delta TechOps) hangar since Sunday. It remains unclear what caused the explosion. However, according to FOX 5 Atlanta sources, the tire had already been removed from the plane at the time.
The blast “sent a piece of metal flying like a missile,” killing two employees instantly, while another was rushed to the hospital with serious injuries, according to local WSB-TV.
The Clayton County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the victims as Mirko Marweg, 58, and Luis Aldarondo, 37.
Delta TechOps President and Operations Chief John Laughter confirmed the deaths of two team members. “Tragically, two of our team members involved passed away, and one other team member was seriously injured,” Laughter said in a statement shared by the media, offering support to the victims’ families and promising an investigation into the incident.
Boeing has faced increased scrutiny in recent years due to various flaws discovered in its aircraft, leading to safety concerns and investigations. Most recently, Boeing halted test flights of its 777X jetliner after inspections revealed failures in critical parts of three out of four test aircraft.
Last month, the US Justice Department submitted a plea agreement in a case against Boeing, marking the final stages of a lengthy legal saga involving the deaths of two whistleblowers. Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to fraud charges for misleading US regulators and attempting to conceal faults with its MCAS stability system. The company failed to inform or train airlines about the system, which contributed to two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed nearly 350 people.
The aerospace giant has agreed to pay a $243.6 million fine and invest an additional $455 million in safety and compliance programs over the next three years. Additionally, it will submit to three years of probation under a monitoring body appointed by the US government.
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If the wheel & tyre are off of the aircraft, then the procedure is to deflate the tyre to half of it’s recommended mounted tyre pressure to prevent a situation such as this.
This could also mean that there was a hairline crack in the rim assembly that only NDI and eddy current checks can find.
If an aircraft lands with ‘hot brakes’, you approach the wheels from fore and aft, and never to the side in the event the thermal expansion from the high braking temps of the wheel blows the assembly apart.
& they do go off like a bomb!
Most heavy aircraft tyres are 26 ply, and require changing when the red cord appears on the outside of the tyre.
The only other wheel & tyre danger that I can think of were the old split-rims used on the big rigs.
Inflating those with the rim lock ring not fully inserted has literally taken heads off. Fortunately, most all big rig rims are now heavy duty one piece rims.
Its the language they use that is interesting, ‘the tyre was removed from the plane’ does that mean they removed the tyre from the rim while the rim was still mounted on the plane? is this language used to mislead or are Jouro’s just idiots? (not the latter I am sure).
Or did the remove the wheel from the plane first and then were applying heat to the rim while the tyre was still fitted? Boom baby, I notice from the names of the deceased they are possibly cheap labour migrants that will cut corners to get a leg up and are exploited for that reason.
Bit like the Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse
The sealing repair workers killed were migrants on night shift doing work nobody else was interested in doing
Exactly!
Non-FAA Certified Airframe and Powerplant Mechanics are the norm now in the airline’s quest to save $$$.
This is the trend in B & C-Check hangars and Isochronal Inspection Docks.
One A&P Mechanic will have up to 10 non-certified Hispanics working under him or her, who are only skilled in very limited tasking, with the A&P responsible for their screw-ups.
Many of the non-A&P’s will do minimum work output with quality assurance being severely lacking, save for the A&P following-up their work which has no formal training basis.