Corendon Boeing 737's tire blows out on landing in Turkey
A Boeing 737 from Corendon Airlines suffered a blowout to a tire while landing at an airport in Antalya, Turkey. The incident was a result of damaged nose landing gear on the aircraft, the Turkish minister of transport Abdulkadir Uraloglu said. The Boeing 737-800 has also been used to shuttle passengers back and forth to airports in the Netherlands, with two departures and arrivals from Groningen just in the past week.
The 190 passengers and crew remained unharmed.
“As always, all of our relevant crews went to the field and were on alert during the incident,” Uraloglu said. “Fortunately, there were no injuries to the 184 passengers and 6 crew members.”
The initial investigation found that the runway was not damaged, but it was still temporarily closed to aircraft while the situation was being handled. “Flights will be diverted to Antalya and other nearby airports,” he said.
The minister also included photos of the broken landing gear with his message on X. The incident happened on a plane flying from Cologne, Germany, to the airport Antalya-Gazipasa.
The Turkish company Corendon Airlines, which is separate from the Dutch Corendon, wrote that as far as they know, there have been no other accidents due to problems with the landing gear. Passengers were able to leave the aircraft safely via the stairs, as stated in the online statement.
Other flights were diverted to other regional airports because the Boeing 737 8 could not be lifted off the landing strip.
Experts told the press bureau Reuters that cracked tires are quite common and usually only require minor repairs. Sometimes, it is necessary to search longer for the tire's remains.
The Cologne Bonn Airport also counts some residents of the Netherlands among its passengers. The airport is just 85 kilometers from the border with the Dutch province of Limburg. Nearly 10 million passengers departed or arrived at the airport last year, with routes to Turkey and Spain among the most popular.
Boeing has been in the news a lot lately due to problems with its aircraft, including an incident with a detached door panel on an Alaska Airlines flight in January. A cargo plane of the Boeing 767 type also had to make an emergency landing in Istanbul on Wednesday due to problems with the landing gear. The Turkish authorities are investigating the incident.
Reporting by ANP and NL Times