A Delta Air Lines flight was forced to abort takeoff from Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Wednesday morning after blowing two tires on the runway.
According to Atlanta's WSB-TV, passengers were evacuated from the ExpressJet aircraft around 9:30 a.m. local time and transported back to the terminal via bus.
The plane, which was operating as a Delta connection flight bound for Tulsa, Oklahoma, was left disabled on the runway. Fire rescue trucks were sent to the scene as a precaution, and maintenance crews towed the plane off the runway.
No injuries were reported.
"So we're on the plane waiting for takeoff and we hear a big boom," passenger Nicolas Escobar told WSB-TV. "We're like, 'What was that?' So then after a while, the plane starts slowing down and we kind of feel that's not even up. When we stopped we realized that they tell us that, one tire blew out."
[CALLOUT]
The plane's emergency slides never deployed, and a stairway truck was used to assist passengers and crew members off of the aircraft.
"ExpressJet flight 5508, operating as Delta Connection from Atlanta to Tulsa, aborted takeoff at approximately 9:22 a.m. ET at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport after two tires deflated," an ExpressJet spokesperson confirmed in a statement to WSB-TV.
"Passengers were safely deplaned through the main cabin door and transported back to the terminal on buses as maintenance crews work to tow the plane off the runway."
The carrier said passengers were accommodated on a different aircraft.
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"We heard there was a tire that blew out, which the pilot said in his 27 years of his career never happened to him, so it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime deal," added Escobar.
While not entirely rare, blown tires are more likely to occur on landing than takeoff. However, the incident could have been much worse.
Last summer, a Hawaiian Airlines flight making an emergency landing at Tokyo's Haneda Airport blew out eight of its tires, stranding the plane and forcing a temporary runway closure.
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