Blown tire forces American Airlines jet to return to Nashvil

[dbaker]

Blown tire forces American Airlines jet to return to Nashville

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet made an emergency landing in Nashville on Sunday evening after it blew a tire on takeoff, an airline spokesman said.

Flight 1307 had just taken off from Nashville shortly after 4 p.m. (5 p.m. EDT) on a non-stop trip to Los Angeles when one of its tires blew apart. Debris from the tire went into one of the engines of the MD-80, causing a "little vibration" for the plane and a lot of concern in the cockpit, said spokesman Al Becker.

The plane was carrying 100 passengers and five crew members. The pilot knew within several minutes of takeoff that he wanted to come back to Nashville, said Becker.

"He spent about three hours in the air just burning fuel to get light enough to land back at the Nashville airport," Becker said.

Sounds a lot like the AF Concorde incident on July 25, 2000.

I have to wonder why they flew around for three hours to make an emergency landing at their origin when their destination is only 1600mi away.

At least, why not dump fuel instead of burn it? There's plenty of space that's not far from BNA.

I'm pretty surprised that AA serves BNA-LAX non stop. How weird. Maybe they're trying hard to drive WN under or something.

[JW]

The MD-80s in particular don't have the option to dump fuel, hence the three-hour weight burn off. I'm not sure of the extent of the damage to the engine, but even staying at BNA, the extra burn off was probably deemed necessary so that they would not overstress the remaining landing gear.

-jw