A wheel fell off a United Airlines Boeing 777-20 plane headed for Osaka, Japan as it was taking off from San Francisco Thursday at approximately 11:30 am. United Flight 35 was diverted to Los Angeles International Airport, where it landed safely, the airline confirmed to New York Post. There were 235 passengers, 10 flight attendants and four pilots on board. No one was hurt, however several cars in the parking lot of the San Francisco airport were damaged, as were fences and other airline property. Video footage shows the United flight taking off, and several seconds later one of the plane’s wheels falls off. Smashed cars and damaged fencing also appear in the video. .This was the third mid-air problem a United Airline Boeing plane has been involved in this week. “We are working to arrange a new aircraft to continue this trip for our customers,” a United spokesperson told the Post, confirming debris from the tire “caused damage to several vehicles” in an employee parking lot at the San Francisco airport. “There were no injuries. The runway was briefly closed to clear debris, but has since reopened,” said United. They added that the plane is designed to land safely even if its tires are damaged or missing. .On Monday one of the engines on a United Boeing 737-900 plane flying out of Texas caught on fire about five minutes into the flight. It returned to George H. Bush Intercontinental Houston Airport safely. A second incident, also on Monday, involved a Boeing 575-300 flight traveling from Honolulu to San Francisco. Its engine failed over the Pacific Ocean. The plane landed safely in San Francisco approximately an hour after the engine failure was discovered. The door plug of a Boeing Max 9 flight blew off on an Alaskan Airlines flight in January, prompting an investigation into the aircraft manufacturer. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) expert panel in February concluded Boeing has a “lack of awareness of safety-related metrics at all levels of the organization.”
