A Boeing plane’s tyre burst during landing in Turkey today, the third passenger aircraft built by the manufacturing giant to suffer a technical problem or crash in just two days.
A total of 190 people were evacuated from the aircraft after the Boeing 737-800, belonging to Turkey-based Corendon Airlines, stopped on the runway after landing at Gazipasa airport near the Mediterranean coastal town of Alanya.
Pictures from the scene today showed the stationary aircraft on the tarmac flanked by emergency vehicles – its front wheels and landing gear crumpled underneath. Corendon Airlines denied Turkish reports that the aircraft had landed on its nose.
While none of the 184 passengers and six crew members on the flight from Cologne, Germany to Turkey were injured, the dramatic landing was just the latest in a string of hair-raising incidents involving Boeing planes over the last two days.
On Wednesday, a Boeing 767 cargo plane operated by FedEx made an emergency landing at Istanbul Airport after its front landing gear failed. Dramatic video showed the nose of the plane skidding across the runway as it came to a halt.
And just this morning, shocking footage emerged showing the moment terrified passengers fled a burning Boeing 737-300 jet carrying 78 passengers that skidded off the runway and caught fire during take-off in Senegal.
There is no suggestion Boeing are to blame for the crashes, and the cause of the Senegal crash is not yet known.
But the incidents will only compound woes for the company which is already facing intense scrutiny amid a string of mishaps and controversy over safety concerns – as well as the deaths of two whistleblowers just two months apart.
In the case of the crash landing in Senegal, the plane suffered serious damage when a failed takeoff attempt sent it careening off the tarmac and into the bush at Blaise Diagne airport near the capital city Dakar.
A clip taken by one horrified traveller showed a female customer fleeing the scene of the wreckage as flames poured from the 737’s left engine, lighting up the night sky.
Emergency crews rushed to evacuate the passengers, eleven of whom were injured, four seriously so – though no deaths have been reported.
Authorities are now trying to establish the cause of the incident.
‘Our plane just caught fire,’ wrote Malian musician Cheick Siriman Sissoko in a post on Facebook that showed passengers jumping down the emergency slides at night.
Transport Minister El Malick Ndiaye said the Air Sénégal flight operated by TransAir was headed to Bamako, in neighbouring Mali, late Wednesday with 79 passengers, two pilots and four cabin crew.
The injured were being treated at a hospital, while the others were taken to a hotel.
No other details were immediately available. Boeing did not respond to a request for comment by the Associated Press, the news outlet reported.
Meanwhile, questions were also being raised over the incident in Turkey.
Ankara’s Transport and Infrastructure Ministry reported damage to the plane’s front gear but did not provide further details.
The runway was not damaged but flights were diverted to the nearby Antalya airport while the aircraft was being removed.
The ministry said the incident occurred at around 11am.
‘The evacuation of the 190 people on board, consisting of 184 passengers and 6 crew members, has been completed,’ a statement said.
‘There were no injuries reported among the passengers, and initial assessments indicate no damage on the runway.’
In the case of the FedEx plane on Wednesday, the flight had taken off from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport early on Wednesday and was bound for Istanbul when the pilot realised the landing gear was malfunctioning.
Unsettling footage showed the moment the plane attempted an emergency landing, touching down into the runway and scraping its nose along the concrete.
Sparks flew from the plane’s tattered fuselage as it crunched along the tarmac with smoke billowing from behind.
Fortunately, firefighters and rescue teams were already waiting at the scene, with Turkey’s transport ministry having dispatched emergency teams as soon as it learned that the pilot’s landing gear was not working.
The first responders flocked to surround the plane as it ground to a halt and immediately doused it with firefighting foam to prevent any potential fire from sparking.
No one was injured in the incident and the crew safely evacuated the aircraft, said Abdulkadir Uraloglu, Turkey’s transportation and infrastructure minister.
The runway where the plane landed was closed off while the aircraft was being removed, he said.
‘IGA Istanbul Airport Rescue and ARFF continues its efforts to move the aircraft to a safe area and open the runway to flight traffic. Flight traffic and operations continue smoothly on all other runways, including the spare runways,’ a statement read.
Boeing is already under the microscope amid mounting controversy over safety problems, suspected quality control issues and the deaths of whistleblowers.
It has also been accused of letting safety lapse as it obsesses over ‘woke’ diversity targets in staffing, as well as over-paying executives working from home.
Current CEO Dave Calhoun announced in March he would be stepping down at the end of this year in a management overhaul, with share prices plunging.
And passengers are said to be deliberately changing flights to avoid Boeing’s fleet or travelling with anti-anxiety medication.
The US’ Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it has opened an investigation into the company after workers at a South Carolina plant falsified inspection records on certain 787 planes.
In an email to Boeing’s South Carolina employees on April 29, Scott Stocker, who leads the 787 program, said a worker observed an ‘irregularity’ in a required test of the wing-to-body join and reported it to his manager.
‘After receiving the report, we quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed,’ Stocker wrote.
No planes have been taken out of service, but having to perform the test out of order on planes will slow the delivery of jets still being built at the final assembly plant in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Boeing must also create a plan to address planes that are already flying, the FAA said.
‘The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records,’ a statement read.
In April, a Boeing whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, also testified at a congressional hearing that the company had taken manufacturing shortcuts to turn out 787s as quickly as possible.
The company was already under intense pressure since a door plug blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January, leaving a gaping hole in the plane.
The accident halted progress that Boeing seemed to be making while recovering from two deadly crashes of Max jets in 2018 and 2019.
Those crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which killed 346 people, are back in the spotlight, too.
The families of some of the victims have pushed the Justice Department to revive a criminal fraud charge against the company by determining that Boeing’s continued lapses violated the terms of a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement.
Meanwhile, two whistleblowers embroiled in a dispute with Boeing died just months apart from each other earlier this year, only increasing speculation over the aerospace company’s dealings.
Former quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems, Joshua Dean, 45, died last week from a mystery infection – less than two months after whistleblower John Barnett, 62, died by suicide in the midst of a legal action against Boeing.
Brian Knowles, a South Carolina based attorney who represented both whistleblowers, said that his clients were ‘heroes.’
‘They loved the company and wanted to help the company do better,’ Knowles said.
‘They didn’t speak out to be aggravating or for fame. They’re raising concerns because people’s lives are at stake.’
While Knowles has declined to speculate about Barnett’s apparent suicide, he said the Boeing whistleblower never showed any signs that he wanted to end his life.
The lawyer said: ‘I knew John Barnett for seven years and never saw anything that would indicate he would take his own life… Then again, I’ve never dealt with someone who did [commit suicide[. So maybe you don’t see the signs. I don’t know.’
Dean previously said he was fired from his job as a quality auditor at Spirit AeroSystems for questioning standards at the supplier’s plant in Wichita, Kansas, in October 2022.
Boeing’s share prices have tumbled by almost 10 percent to $173.86 over the past six months as more safety concerns have come to light.
Spirit manufactured the door plug on the Boeing jet which shockingly blew out midair on an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
Dean died in hospital on Tuesday after a sudden illness, his family said on social media. He was fired from Spirit AeroSystems in April 2023.
Earlier this year, Dean spoke with NPR about being fired. ‘I think they were sending out a message to anybody else. If you are too loud, we will silence you,’ he said.
His former employer, Spirit AeroSystems shared a statement expressing condolences to Dean’s family.
‘Our thoughts are with Josh Dean’s family, spokesperson Joe Buccino said. ‘This sudden loss is stunning news here and for his loved ones.’
In January, Dean told The Wall Street Journal that he was fired because he pointed out that holes were wrongly drilled in a fuselage, something his employer denied.
‘It is known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you will be moved. It doesn’t mean you completely disregard stuff, but they don’t want you to find everything and write it up,’ he said.
Boeing has long denied Dean, and other whistleblower claims that the company willfully ignored safety warnings.
Barnett, meanwhile, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound – though his friends contested this, saying that he told them before ‘if anything happens to me, it’s not suicide’.
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David Averre
