An Emirates A380 landed safely in Brisbane, Australia, on Saturday after apparently making some or even most of the 13-hour flight from Dubai with a big ragged hole in its wing root fairing. There are various scenarios being described in media and social media, but all that has been confirmed is that the incident occurred in the air and the crew elected to continue the flight. The plane landed in Brisbane and ground crews shot cellphone video of a damaged main gear tire and the hole in the composite fairing where it would have been when retracted.
Probably a good deal for these students, they’ll need jobs as ‘social media influencers’ when they graduate, as there won’t be pilot jobs to be had for a long while.
you stated " UND, which is located in Grand Forks, North Dakota, is attended by around 1800 students."
I think you missed a zero at the end.
Enrollment at UND is closer to 18,000
John R. Holand UND Class of 2002, BS Computer Science
I suppose it is possible that a blown tire on takeoff could have punched a smaller hole in the fairing and the “bang” reported later in the flight was another piece of the damaged fairing departing the plane.
I would have to say that as long as the pilot was able to safely control the aircraft, and there was no passenger or cargo issues, along with the plane not spewing any fluids or having any other problems, he was right to continue flying. Now had that hole continued and or caused more problems, than he would have been prudent to put down. It’s a judgment call.
I agree. Along with the items Karrpilot brings up there is the issue of how much above landing weight the plane was after the crew realized there was an issue. The tire very well could have thrown some tread causing the hole over the wheel well. I doubt that area is pressurized. It would then not be unusual for that tire to blow out a few minutes later into the flight causing more damage. I used to test aircraft tires for what was BFGoodrich and you would be amazed at the damage a tire can do when it fails, even after the takeoff is completed and the tire sits unloaded and still holding air for a few minutes. Without a visual picture of what damage was done it is almost impossible to make diversion decision without other data coming from the aircraft computers. Thankfully the flight ended without further incident.
Emirates could be more conservative that Qantas. If there was even one anomalous data point other than tire pressure on a single sensor, I am confident they would have turned back.
There is a great YT vid showed an EAA member who’d taken great advantage of the video input options for his avionics screens. At little cost he has installed cameras (among other places) in the wheel wells that show the movement and state of all wheels. Forget 3 greens, you can watch all three wheels extend and retract. It reminded me of the thought years prior that aircraft could and should have cameras around the airframe as minor, almost zero cost additions to lights and other fittings. That emirates aircrew really should have had instant awareness that fairing damage had occurred. They wouldn’t have flown away from the best place for repairs.
Good thing they built them strong. Seem to remember another incident where departing fan blades caused a hole which did not spread and the aircraft landed OK.
During my high school years (a long time ago!) I worked at a busy full-service gas station. Those were bias-ply tire days, and we changed a multitude of tires in spring and fall for summer/winter use. One day my friend and owner’s son was operating the tire changer while everyone else did the balance, removal and reinstall. An auto tire blew (no known reason), launched him across a twelve foot wide garage bay. He struck the exit sign above a man door, and landed on the floor - in his underwear! Miraculously, he was just banged up. Funny now but could have ended tragically. To this day I (kiddingly) blame his actions on that event. A lot of energy in compressed gasses.
Depends on how sure you are that design protects against a blown tire.
The DC-8 that came apart circling back to a runway in Africa after tire blew did not.
(Blowing tire started a fire that led to major failure of airplane structure.)
Since the Avro Jetliner, excepting the Comet 1, pressurized airliners have tear-stopping features in fuselage structure.
Newest airliners such as 787 have more separation of key systems so a single failure does not take all ‘redundant’ systems out.
Minor case was A32x whos nose tire lost its tread at rotation, crew lost all primary displays for a half a minute or so. Both IRUs were adjacent in the avionics rack, clever designers of that brand used a very high vertical acceleration as a monitor for circuitry failure, assuming level would not be experienced when airliner was intact. But whack of tread on fuselage created local forces that created it.