Blowouts and Debris Occur Rarely on Runways

Sept. 2 -- An American Airlines DC-10 was in the middle of its takeoff down the runway at Puerto Rico’s Luiz Munoz Marin International Airport in 1985 when the crew heard a loud thump. Suddenly, the plane began to vibrate.

At maximum speed, the captain slammed on his brakes, aborting the takeoff. He was unable to stop on the remaining runway and the plane ended up with its nose dug deep into a lagoon at the end of the airport.

No one was injured in the accident, but an investigation showed that one of the tires burst after running over debris on the runway. Another tire failed from overload.

Although the incident happened 15 years ago, the events leading up to it are similar to those investigators now believe led to July’s fatal Concorde crash, and indicate that debris on the runway poses potentially serious risks to passengers.

A preliminary report on the Concorde crash released this week, said a metal strip on the runway from another plane had likely burst one of the plane’s tires, sending chunks of hot rubber tearing into the wing, and triggering a chain of events that caused the plane to crash in flames less than two minutes after takeoff on July 25.

The report also found that a fire drill delayed a routine inspection of the runway, leaving it uninspected for 12 hours.

Concorde Circumstances Rare

Air safety experts say the circumstances that seem to have lead to the Concorde crash are very uncommon and that the Concorde’s design — in which the wheels are directly under the wing fuel tanks — made the situation worse.

Despite isolated incidents where tires blow out on takeoff or landing, typical airliners can usually recover without major incidents.

“The tire problem doesn’t even register on the list of safety concerns,” said Jim McKenna, executive director for the Aviation Safety Alliance, a safety advocacy organization based in Washington. “It’s almost unheard of for tires to cause the kind of damage that they caused on the Concord.”