That’s not a sentence any of us want to hear escaping a pilot’s lips, unless of course said pilot was so damn good at flying that he managed to successfully land an aircraft without realising it was missing one pretty important feature.
Grab this man a medal or as some have suggested name an airport after him (a little over the top ay?), because this Air Canada employee may very well be pilot of the year after making this “miracle” landing.
The pilot and his crew were travelling along peacefully on a Boeing 777-300 from Montreal to London when absolutely nothing happened.
That’s right, they were flying and then they arrived at their destination on time with no issue. It was practically a perfect service, well at least it was for those in the aircraft.
For those on the ground it was a completely different situation because they could see something nobody on board could – the Boeing aircraft was missing a wheel.
According to reports, shortly after Flight AC864 took off from Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the wheel bearing collapsed, causing the wheel to snap off while the aircraft made its way up to cruising speed.
The issue went unnoticed by flight crew until after landing in London and the wheel was later located stuck to a fence a few kilometres from the airport.
Although no one on board was injured, the missing wheel caused some damage to the aircraft’s landing gear and shocked airport workers who said they’d “never seen anything like this in their life”.
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Investigations are currently underway into the cause of the malfunction and why crew weren’t alerted to the issue as it occurred
An Air Canada spokesperson said the carrier maintains its fleet to “the highest standard” and stressed that the missing wheel had “no impact on the safe operation of the flight”.