Plane door falls off after taking off from Las Vegas runway
KVVU, WKBW, FLIGHTAWARE.COM, VIEWER PHOTO, CNN
By Jaclyn Schultz
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LAS VEGAS (KVVU) — Federal aviation authorities are investigating a flight out of North Las Vegas where a plane took off from the runway and its door fell off and landed on the ground.
The Federal Aviation Administration released the following statement:
“A single-engine Diamond DA40 landed safely at North Las Vegas Airport … on Thursday, March 7, after the pilot reported losing the left rear passenger door. Two people were on board. The FAA will investigate.”
The plane is registered to an owner out of Colorado, but a source tells FOX5, it’s managed by a company out of the North Las Vegas airport. We are waiting to hear back.
No word from the FAA where the door was located around the perimeter of the flight. The plane reached an altitude of around 3,000 feet– or 800 feet off the ground– then turned around and landed back at the airport.
The plane is registered to an owner out of Colorado, but a source tells FOX5, its managed by a company out of the North Las Vegas airport. We are waiting to hear back.
After recent frightening incidents with commercial flights, interest has soared in plane parts falling to the ground. Aviation expert Michael McCarron, a former assistant deputy director at the San Francisco Airport, tells FOX5 and our viewers that these incidents are nothing new and the FAA has investigated them for decades. The feds even have a term for them: TFOA– or “things falling off aircraft.”
You never want anything falling from an aircraft. Unforeseen things do occur. That’s one of the main reasons the air crew, the pilots, walk around and look at the aircraft and make sure everything’s intact, the panels are where they should be, the doors latch as they should.
“The FAA will launch an investigation. They’ll look at the maintenance records, and look at the manufacturing history of the aircraft,” McCarron said.
The same model has been under recent scrutiny. As recently as February 13, FOX Business reported a single-engine Diamond DA40 made an emergency landing in Buffalo, also after the left rear passenger door flew off. Crews went to neighborhoods searching for the door.
FOX5 obtained a 2010 manual for owners of the Diamond DA40, which warns against trying to lock an open door, mid-flight– causing the door to drop from the plane. The manual says the plane can be flown safely to the nearest airfield.
“If it happens at an altitude, it can be highly dangerous as far as rapid decompression, blown eardrums and things being sucked out of the aircraft,” McCarron said.
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