"Virgin Blue wheel 'disintergrated' on landing"
 

This will be interesting to see the cause.

Should make for some interesting reading.

Ah the usual intellectually stimulating articles that are read on the internet from out friends the media. just subtracted the word qantas here and there and added Virgin Blue instead.:rolleyes:

who cares about what media reporting who, qantas accident or not, you people need to get over that crap. Its a serious incident and just think what could happen if it fell off whilst rolling.

I dont think this is the first time either for one of their 737's.

Another media beatup, with union help.
 

According to later reports this evening, the wheel did not disintegrate. The hub suffered a wheel bearing failure. This is not as serious a failure, and is far more far more benign than the reported wheel disintegration.

If Steve Purvinas, federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association is as careful with his aircraft maintenance as he with his assumptions of the incident then God help us all.

Another classic quote from the federal secretary of the ALAEA in the following article:

Wheel of Virgin Blue plane disintegrated on landing


Wheels fall upwards?!

The ATSB will conduct an investigation and the results will be made public. This is a good thing and I have no doubt that air travel in Australia is safer than it ever has been.

Let the media have their fun with this, frankly most media outlets in this country have alot to answer for when it comes to credible reporting of news minus sensationalism. Remember, headlines sell....... facts, well they get buried in the text.

The headline on the above article could just as easily been written "ATSB to investigate 737 wheel hub failure" but I doubt it would generate too many hits :)

Latest report has Virgin Blue looking at taking legal action against Mr Purvinas due to his comments...

Even then, they're quite rare...

It was interesting to see the photo on the news tonight. It appears that a massive failure of the wheel hub assembly has occurred, similar to the nose wheel incident not that long ago. Personally from the picture shown on the news, it appears that there was a stress crack around the wheel bearing, or due to corrosion. A crack would have came from the corrosion or from a sharp edge, which there is none on a wheel. It is very common to have wheels cracked, however that is only picked up in the wheel bay when the wheels get NDT (non destructive testing) using dye penetrate.