The airport, east of the southern Italian city of Taranto, was the scene of an unusual incident on Tuesday. Just as a Dreamlifter cargo plane had just lifted off, a wheel came loose from one of the undercarriages from a low altitude in just a few seconds. An amateur filmmaker recorded the take-off in a clip of just under a minute, which he uploaded to Twitter.
“An Atlas Air-operated Boeing 747 Dreamlifter (N718BA) taking off from Taranto (IT) for Charleston (USA) on Tuesday morning (10/11/22) lost a main landing gear wheel during take-off,” the Romanian Twitter account said. “Boarding Pass” account.
Similar to the “Beluga” from Airbus, entire fuselage segments can be flown with this special aircraft to the site of the final assembly of the Boeing 787 in Everett in Washington State and Charleston in the State of South Carolina without a great time delay.
Boeing broke new ground in the production of the 787 long-haul jet and outsourced the manufacture of assemblies to 150 companies worldwide. For example, in addition to the front cabin parts from Japan, the tailplane and the center fuselage section are flown in from Italy by Alenia.
The pilots of the flight with the abbreviation 5Y4231 continued their flight in the direction of the transatlantic despite the wheel loss and landed after eleven hours of flight time in Charleston on runway 15 – without any problems, as further posts on Twitter show.
The wheel lost at the start in Taranto has now been found. It had breached the airport fence “and was recovered from a vineyard next to the airport,” writes the Aviation Harald website.
Also read:
– In the Boeing 787 factory: Where the Dreamliner takes flight
– Airbus is shaking up the air freight market with its giant Belugas
– Not just container and cruise ships: MSC creates its own airline
