Passengers aboard an Air Canada Jazz flight from Montreal on Friday watched as one of the wheels fell off as it lifted off from Trudeau International Airport. At least one passenger caught the unusual event on his cellphone and it made for a good story on social media. Our friends at Flyer Magazine in the U.K. put together the video above. The brief video shows fire in the hub of the inboard left main gear of the Dash-8-300 and as the aircraft leaves the runway the tire and wheel assembly falls away to the runway a few dozen feet below. The flight was far from over, however.
Instead of taking the hour-long flight to Saguenay, about 230 miles northeast of Montreal, the 49 passengers and three crew spent a couple of hours in a hold burning off fuel to lighten the plane for the unorthodox forthcoming landing. The arrival back in Montreal was uneventful and Jazz, Air Canada’s largest regional contractor, praised the crew but didn’t say why the wheel fell off. “Our experienced pilots kept complete control of the aircraft. Our pilots are trained to react to such situations and reacted conforming to proper procedure,” Jazz Aviation spokesperson Manon Stuart told the CBC.
