Romain Rouillard / Photo credit: SUAMY BEYDOUN / AGIF / AGIF VIA AFP 5:22 p.m., February 9, 2024
Having detected a problem with a wheel of the landing gear, the crew members of an Airbus A319, connecting Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo, decided to land at another airport to discover the source of the problem. And therefore realized that the wheel in question was simply missing.
More fear than harm for the passengers of this Airbus A319. The aircraft, which was to connect Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo in Brazil, still had to make an emergency landing at Guarulhos airport due to an unusual technical problem, reported by The Aviation Herald.
LATAM Brasil Airbus A319 (PT-TMO, 2011) safely diverted to Sao Paulo-Guarulhos Intl Airport (SBGR), Brazil after the pilots reported an undercarriage problem during descent. After a low-pass for a visual inspection, flight #LA3923 from Rio de Janeiro-SDU to Sao Paulo-CGH landed… pic.twitter.com/1VpJophQzU
— JACDEC (@JacdecNew) February 6, 2024
The plane, registered PT-TMO and chartered by the company LATAM Airlines, left Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. for a one-hour flight which was to take it to the airport. from Congonhas to Sao Paulo. Everything went smoothly, except for one detail: not all of the wheels were present on the landing gear.
An emergency landing... without a hitch
The Aeroin website also specifies that the crew was informed of this, by the air traffic controller, a few moments after takeoff. "As soon as you crossed the opposite threshold, we observed two objects fall into the water. We were unable to identify whether it fell from the plane or whether it was an object that been displaced by its passage", we can hear in a sequence revealed by the YouTube channel Aviation TV. And the air traffic controller continued: “There is one of the objects that we can see, and it seems that… we cannot identify it, but it looks like a black buoy”.
A few seconds later, the pilot was finally informed of the end of the story. “The company contacted us and actually identified that it was the landing gear.” When taking the latter out, a few minutes before arrival, the crew noticed an anomaly and decided to land the aircraft at Guarulhos international airport, also located in Sao Paulo. The objective being to carry out a visual check of the landing gear.
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As the Aeroin website indicates, the teams dispatched to the site confirmed that the train was correctly extended, but that a wheel was indeed missing. However, the plane was able to land without incident and no injuries were reported. A major security system had been deployed on the track.