Boeing 777 scrapes the tail during takeoff, avoiding a major incident

A Boeing 777-300ER aircraft belonging to the South American airline Latam had to make an emergency landing at Milan Malpensa Airport because structural damage occurred when the tail hit the runway, the Italian newspaper reported. The Serra Corriere is a newspaper in the province of Turin. This event, known as a “tail strike,” extended over several hundred meters and lasted several seconds. The Lombardy airport’s surveillance cameras recorded the incident.

Watch the video here:

The National Aviation Safety Agency (ANSV) launched an investigation to determine the details after the incident on July 9. According to experts interviewed by Corriere, if the pilots had cancelled the flight because they were unable to control the plane, the consequences could have been disastrous, according to the local news agency.

The video shows the plane, which was bound for Sao Paulo in Brazil, dragging its tail several hundred metres along the runway as clouds of grey smoke rise behind it. As the chaos began, witnesses claimed to have seen sparks flying from the tail of the plane.

After takeoff, when the pilots were in the air, they asked the control tower to let them return to the airport to have the plane checked. Before landing in the province of Varese, the captain and first officer had to fly around the factory for an hour and ten minutes to lighten the plane. Once on the ground, passengers and cabin crew had to disembark. The Boeing is still in Malpensa.

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