A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Japan was forced to make an emergency landing in Los Angeles on Thursday after it lost one of its wheels during takeoff.
- The wheel came crashing down in an employee parking lot at San Francisco International Airport, says spokesman Doug Yakel. No one was hurt and no vehicles were damaged, he adds. Some debris also landed on the runway, which had to be briefly shut down while workers cleared it, Yakel says.
- The plane, a Boeing 777, was diverted to LAX, where it landed amid several waiting fire trucks, says Dae Levine, a spokesman for the Los Angeles airport. After the plane came to a stop about two-thirds of the way down the runway, it was towed to a gate so its 235 passengers could exit, Levine adds.
- The Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating in hopes of determining what went wrong.