It's definitely better to discover a part fell off a passenger plane before it takes off rather than once it's in the air, but an incident in Georgia over the weekend has still spurred an FAA investigation after recent headlines over aircraft issues. A Delta Air Lines plane headed for Bogota, Colombia, was readying to take off Saturday morning from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport when it lost a tire from one of the front wheels under the plane's nose, reports NBC News. The tire "came off and rolled down the hill," a preliminary FAA report released on Monday says.
Per ABC News, an air traffic controller could be heard informing the pilot of the situation as the Boeing 757 jet with 178 people on board continued to taxi down the runway around 11:15am, noting, "One of your nose tires just came off; it just rolled off the runway behind you." After receiving that news, the pilot then said that crew were trying to arrange for a tow, per CNN Travel.
Delta acknowledged in a statement that a tire fell off of the landing gear of the 32-year-old plane, noting that "all customers and their bags were removed from the aircraft, transferred to the gate and onto a replacement aircraft," per NBC. The FAA reports there were no injuries, and Delta says the plane was back in business the next day. The incident comes as Boeing faces a "tough time," per NBC, with a nationwide grounding of its 737 Max 9 planes after a Jan. 5 incident on Alaska Airlines in which a panel blew off the jetliner midflight, leaving an open hole in the side of the plane. (Boeing is in hot water with Alaska Airlines and United.)
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