Airliner Bursts Five Tyres

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30962, 19 January 1966, Page 18

Airliner Bursts Five Tyres

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) SYDNEY, January 17. An Air India Boeing 707 jet aircraft’s brakes seized and burst five tyres when it landed at Sydney airport today from Bombay.

The big plane carrying 70 passengers careered at 200 m.p.h. down the main runway.

Smoke poured from its undercarriage as the pilot fought desperately for control. The plane careered off the runway and stopped. Burnt strips of rubber flew across the airport. Within seconds, it was surrounded by airport fire trucks and crash waggons. People waiting in the terminal for passengers on the plane raced across the airport grounds. Passengers in the plane remained calm as hostesses asked them to stay in their seats.

On the white concrete runway behind the plane, a black zig-zag showed the path of the swaying plane.

“It was a tremendous racket from inside,” one passenger said later.

“The plane swerved from side to side and I thought more than once we were going to turn over.” Mr Terry Hirst, the Queensland manager of Air India, who was on board the flight, said there was no panic on board.

“In fact, there were some passengers who thought we had just had a rough landing.

“Some of them didn’t even realise we had burst some tyres.

“The pilot. Captain C. P. Narayanan, did a magnificent job and pulled the jet up right in the centre of the runway,” he said.