United Boeing 777 Gushes Fluid From Landing Gear Before Transpacific Flight

Photo: Thierry Monasse (Getty Images)

A United Airlines Boeing 777-300 was forced to return to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport in Australia after takeoff due to a mechanical issue. United Flight 830 was at the start of a 13-and-a-half-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. It appears that hydraulic fluid was gushing from the right landing gear strut. If this sounds familiar, another of the carrier’s Boeing 777 planes had a landing gear wheel fall off while taking off from San Francisco on a transpacific flight just last week.

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A video posted by YouTube channel New York Aviation shows the United aircraft leaving and returning to Sydney two hours later. Emergency crews met the airliner when it touched down, and smoke billowed from the right landing gear. According to CNN, the airline stated that all the passengers onboard deplaned at the gate. They were rescheduled to a flight the next day and booked overnight accommodation.

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It has yet to be determined what precisely was the issue, but the spraying of fluid from a landing gear hints at a hydraulic problem. The loss of the hydraulic system is a critical failure. The system operates the landing gear, brakes, flaps, and flight controls on the Boeing 777.

The incident’s nature points towards a maintenance problem at United Airlines. The Chicago-based airline has had several mechanical failures over the past week. Along with the loose landing gear tire that plowed through an SFO parking lot, a United Airbus A321 also had to divert to Los Angeles last Friday due to a hydraulic issue. I’m no Shakespeare, but something is rotten at United Airlines.