DJ Tyre Blowout At Sydney

[Tim Bowrey]

Yesterday(April 30, 2008) at 4:20pm DJ414 opperated by VH-VBI was begining it's takeoff roll down RWY34L as a giant puff of white smoke was expelled from the aircraft's landing gear. The DJ pilot said he was suffered a tire blowout and there was as object that appeared about 30cm long and 2cm wide which caught his eye about 300m from the 34L threshold about 2m to the left of the centreline.

The Sydney Tower controller(120.5) replied "Your inside left tyre is shreaded" as they exited at Bravo rapid exit. RWY34L was closed for about 20mins as Car 2 and 3 searched the runway for any problems. They said they saw hundreds of little bits of shreaded tyre but no sight of the metal bar(much like the Concorde story). They called the runway to be closed and required a sweep cleaner to come on the runway and clear it ASAP as "QF5 SYD-SIN-FRA" (VH-OJJ) had been holding at A6 for almost this whole time in which all flights were diverted to 34R.

According to Sydney Tower, they were having an interesting conversation with Car 2 saying that an earlier flight "Malaysian Cargo 747-200F" had a very rough landing(very smoking and hard which I saw) according to the MASkargo captain who was contacted.

Runway 34L in total was closed for about 1 hour until BA10 was taxiing for departure and EK419 was about to land. Although there wasnt much good traffic besides a few cargos that arrived/departed it wasn't the best day for spotting until I got a situation like this.

I will post some pics soon, although you can't see much of the popped tyre as it was an inside one.

Thanks for reading!

Tim