United flight loses tire in fresh Boeing incident

STORY: In a new incident involving Boeing: a United Airlines plane lost a tire mid-air on Thursday while taking off from San Francisco.

United said the Boeing B777-200 jet was carrying 249 people on its way to Japan.

According to the carrier, it made a safe emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport, where the authorities could be seen inspecting the plane and the tire that fell off.

Reports say the wheel fell into an airport parking lot and that no one was injured.

It happened the same day as the US transport agency’s report on another incident aboard a United Airlines Boeing flight in early February.

It involved a MAX 8 jet’s rudder pedals being ‘stuck’ while trying to land at New Jersey’s Newark airport.

According to the agency’s investigation, the captain said the pedals were “stuck” in neutral as they were trying to keep the plane on the runway’s centerline.

No one was injured, according to the report.

Boeing said it worked with United to diagnose what happened, saying, “The issue was successfully resolved with the replacement of three parts and the airplane returned to service last month.”

The plane maker has been under scrutiny in recent months after a mid-air cabin panel blowout on a 737 MAX 9 jet early January.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration later told airlines using the older Boeing 737-900ER jets to inspect door plugs over unspecified issues with bolts.

And last month, the FAA ordered inspections in 737 MAX airplanes for loose bolts in the rudder control systems, after the plane maker recommended them in December.

In a move to tackle quality control concerns, Boeing on Thursday announced an overhaul of executive and staff bonuses to focus on safety and quality.

Sixty percent of the payout will now be based on metrics of those two components for its commercial planes.

It also said this year’s operational goals will be exclusively focused on safety and quality