Retreads on Commercial Airliners

Don’t believe everything you read in the Sunday Times, as true in 2004 as 1983.

Oh…I’ve just seen that the article is 21 years old!!! 😀

Patrick Forman, the author, needs shooting for this hysterical uninformed piece. The use of remoulds in commercial air transport cannot be viewed from the same perspective as car remoulds. It has proven itself over many years to be an acceptable thing to do.

If Captain Brown had taken the orthodox action of continuing from a sub V1 tyre failure he would firstly have not exposed himself to an insurance company refusal to pay out due to him not following procedures and secondly would have given himself time to assess the situation properly, burn off/dump fuel so that he could return for a landing at a significantly lower speed with a full runway length ahead of him. This may well have avoided all the knock on problems he gave himself. Forman reckons Brown was a hero despite the fact that he ended up with the aircraft burning and a passenger with a broken leg. Had he followed the standard practices he may well have landed with nothing more than one tyre shredded.

Forman shoots himself in the foot claiming that the 727 has 6 wheels as its ‘main’ undercarriage while the 747 has 16. Well he must be including nosewheels with the 727 and not with the 747. What he may have meant to say was the number of braked wheels as the 727 had nosewheel brakes unlike the 747.

I could go on but I’ll only raise my blood pressure!

6 years old! I thought aircraft tyres were replaced every week or month?

This guy’s head must be huge with all the hot air he got in it!

In the name of the wee man! He’s making aHUGE deal out of something that RARELY happens, 1 in every 12,000 take offs I think!