‘Definitely not in situ’: Tower confirms wheel missing to fly-by A319

Canadian investigators are probing the loss of a main landing-gear wheel from an Air Canada Airbus A319, confirmed during a tower fly-by as the aircraft prepared for arrival at Toronto. The aircraft had been operating the AC715 service from New York LaGuardia Tuesday. Its crew had advised LaGuardia’s departure control, shortly after take-off, that they needed to maintain 220kt for a while because the brakes had “just got hot a little bit” and they had left the landing-gear deployed for cooling. “It’s no big deal,” the pilot told the departure controller. As the aircraft broke off its descent the controller contacted the crew to inform them that the outside right-hand main-gear wheel “appears to be completely missing”. <br/>