American Airlines Flight 386 landed safely at O'Hare airport on Monday afternoon after blowing two tires on landing, but the plane was quickly surrounded by fire trucks and police cars on the tarmac. Passengers got off using stairs as buses waited nearby to take them to the terminal.
The flight had come from New York's LaGuardia Airport and touched down around 2 p.m. The sight of emergency vehicles around the aircraft about 3:45 p.m. gave the incident a sharper edge, even though delays at O'Hare were still under 15 minutes.
What happened next is the part travelers at the airport would have been watching most closely: the aircraft was taken out of service to be inspected by American. That is standard when a plane is involved in tire damage on landing, and it means the jet will not return to the schedule until crews have checked whether the landing gear and surrounding systems held up as they should have.
The unanswered question is why the two tires blew in the first place. It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured, and no detail was available on what triggered the damage. That leaves the event with two clear facts and one open gap — the flight came in safely, but the airplane was still treated as a serious enough problem to pull it from service.
The American Airlines Chicago airport emergency was not the only tire issue at O'Hare on Monday. United Airlines flight 739 also sustained tire damage after landing, and those passengers were taken off using stairs and boarded buses back to the terminal. Two arriving flights with tire damage on the same day is enough to keep the focus on the airport's runway conditions and on what American will find when the inspection is finished.
