A group of students and chaperones from a central Illinois school were among the 235 passengers onboard a United Airlines plane that lost a tire on Thursday while taking off from San Francisco.
Sixteen students at Peoria Christian School and three chaperones were about 10 minutes into their flight to Japan - where they were headed on a mission trip - when the pilot came over the loudspeaker.
"The pilot went on the overhead and said air traffic control said something happened during takeoff, they’re looking into it," Cory Hynek, said Peoria Christian's athletic director, one of the chaperones on the trip. "They wouldn’t give us details."
Video shows the plane losing one of the six tires on its left-side main landing gear assembly seconds after takeoff. The tire landed in an employee parking lot at San Francisco International Airport, where it smashed into a car and shattered its back window before breaking through a fence and coming to stop in a neighboring lot.
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No one was injured, airport spokesman Doug Yakel said in a statement.
About 10 minutes after the pilot's initial announcement, he informed passengers the aircraft had lost a tire and that they'd circle around for a little while before diverting to Los Angeles International Airport.
As the situation unfolded, everyone onboard seemed calm.
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"Our students have been great. If they let on that they were nervous or whatever, we didn’t know," Hynek said. "They know that God has a plan for this trip. We were just really relaxing and calm through it."
Hynek was reassured by the school's principal, whom the group texted when they learned the plane's wheel had fallen off. He read most planes of that sizes possess multiple wheels and having one less wheel likely wouldn't affect the landing much.
"That was a little comforting to know Google came to the rescue to calm us a little bit," Hynek said.
Aviation experts said planes losing tires is a rare occurrence and not indicative of a larger safety issue.
“In aviation, we never want to have single points of failure if they can be avoided, and this is a case in point,” said Alan Price, a former chief pilot for Delta Air Lines.
“The remaining tires are fully capable of handling the load,” he added.
When all was said and done, Hynek explained that everything worked out well.
"...Some of us when you first hear we lost a wheel, I'm thinking crash landing. One of the kids commented, 'Are we going to have a pull a 'Sully?'... He said something after the fact." The student in question was referring to Sully Sullenberger, the pilot who susccessfuly landed a U.S. Airways flight on New York's Hudson River.
After a few hours in Los Angeles, the group boarded their flight and was well on its way.
Students are now looking forward to the remainder of the trip as they explore Japan.
"The kids are in good spirits and we’re just ready to get started and see more of Japan here," Hynek said.
