https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/alaska-airlines-emergency-landing-pdx-tire-failure/283-37fed937-ea91-448b-8553-5d6b7335476bPORTLAND, Ore. — An Alaska Airlines flight made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport on Monday morning after experiencing a tire failure during departure from Chicago.
Alaska Airlines Flight 413, en route from Chicago O'Hare International Airport to Portland, sustained the tire failure during takeoff, according to the airline. Flight and maintenance crews determined it was safe to continue the approximately two-hour flight to Portland. As a precaution, pilots declared an emergency landing to ensure additional support was available if needed, the airline said. The aircraft landed safely at about 9:20 a.m. and a couple parked in the cell phone waiting area saw it come in.
"Once the airplane came down and landed and it was the only one landing on that runway, we saw two more fire trucks with their lights on coming from the other side," said Pam Dickey. "We just watched it, nothing was on fire no smoke, don't know what was happening to it."
The Port of Portland said PDX Airport Fire & Rescue was dispatched at 9 a.m., indicating the tire failure occurred during departure rather than on landing.
"When you have some kind of a irregular thing happen to you, you want to make sure that you have all the the safety bases covered. So that's kind of standard to have the equipment standing by," Elden Ferris, a retired commercial airline pilot from Vancouver, told KGW.
The aircraft is being evaluated by Alaska Airlines maintenance technicians.
"While this incident is a rare occurrence, our flight crews train extensively to safely manage through many scenarios," Alaska Airlines said in a statement. "We apologize for any concern this experience may have caused."
Data indicates airliner tire blowouts or "bursts" are relatively rare, occurring in approximately one in 10,000 takeoffs, and in approximately one in 100,000 landings. It is far more rare for there to be any incident caused by tire bursts as the vast majority of planes experiencing a tire burst land safely.
