Originally Posted by
DAL 88 Driver
Just saw a clip on Fox News. Looks to me like a fire in the right main landing gear area and I could see passengers sliding down the tailcone slide. One report I saw indicated a blown tire on landing. I'm guessing a brake fire.
I blew a tire on landing in the 88 once. The degradation to braking effectiveness with one blown tire was very eye opening. Had to go back into heavy reverse thrust to get the aircraft stopped within the runway. And the braking effort with only one tire on that side resulted in substantial damage to the remaining tire. I could see this scenario easily resulting in a brake fire.
Had the exact opposite experience on the -9. Coming down final we felt a thump; everything indicated normal so we figured we must've hit a bird. In reality, it was the #4 tire blowing out. Landed normally, normal reverse/braking, and taxied to parking. We had no idea anything was wrong until we got to the gate and everyone was looking at our airplane kind of funny.