A United Airlines plane landed safely in Denver on Monday after a wheel fell off the plane during take off from Los Angeles earlier in the day.
Officials at Denver International Airport said United Flight 1001, a Boeing 757-200 — landed at DIA just before 11 a.m. after a wheel fell off the plane’s rear landing gear during takeoff from LAX. No injuries were reported among the 174 passengers and seven crew members.
United says an investigation is now underway to determine what caused the wheel to fall off. The wheel has since been recovered in Los Angeles.
Allen Stubblefield was traveling from Southern California to Iowa with a connecting flight in Denver. He flies frequently for work and has never experienced an emergency landing. He said the takeoff felt completely normal, but halfway through the flight the pilot called the PA to say they were making an emergency landing in Denver.
“I’ve gone through a lot of safety procedures and you get to a point where you’re only half-listening or barely listening,” he said.
Stubblefield said he heard no complaints or panic from passengers.
As they made the final landing, Stubblefield said a flight attendant turned on the loudspeaker and said, “Brace yourself, brace yourself, brace yourself.”
“It wasn’t the smoothest landing and I didn’t expect it to be,” Stubblefield said. “There was a bump, but that was it.”
After landing safely, he said he struck up a conversation with his seat neighbors to make taxiing as normal as possible. “We were completely off-topic.”
Archive audio from air traffic control shows several other pilots alerting air traffic controllers that the wheel had fallen off.
“There’s a tire that came loose on that B757 that took off,” a pilot radioed. “We saw it roll past B7-B8.”
“Tower, United 1001, we have been informed that a tire has come loose on your aircraft,” the tower radios to the United pilot.
In March, a United Airlines Boeing 777 plane landed safely at LAX after lose a band shortly after takeoff from San Francisco International Airport. That tire crushed a car to the ground and damaged several other vehicles.