Serious tail impact incident with LATAM Boeing 777-300 at Milan Airport

July 12, 2024

Summary

A Boeing 777-300ER of the airline LATAM was involved in a tail impact incident at Milan Malpensa Airport (MXP).
The incident occurred during an attempt to take off from MXP airport. The tail of the 777-300ER scraped the runway for several seconds.
Following the incident, the aircraft dumped fuel before returning to MXP.

A Boeing 777-300ER operated by LATAM Airlines suffered a severe tail impact in Milan, Italy. A video of the incident shows the aircraft scraping the surface of the runway with its tail as it attempted to take off from the departure airport.

Scraping the tail

The incident occurred on July 9, when LATAM Airlines Boeing 777-300ER, registration PT-MUG, was operating flight LA8073 from Milan Malpensa Airport (MXP) to São Paulo Guarulhos International Airport (GRU).

However, as the plane took off from the Italian airport, its tail grazed the runway for a few seconds. Video footage of the incident was shared on X, formerly Twitter. The video shows the tail of the plane grazed the runway and a cloud of white smoke forming behind it before the plane lifted off the ground.

American Airlines Boeing 737-800 landing at JFK shutterstock_1674484681

American Airlines suffers tail strike on Boeing 737 after landing in Chicago

The aircraft was forced to perform a go-around and make a second landing attempt at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

Redirect to MXP

Although the aircraft took off at 11:26 a.m. local time (UTC +2) and began to climb, the LATAM Airlines 777-300ER never exceeded an altitude of 5,900 feet (1,798 meters). The wide-body aircraft then dumped fuel for about an hour and landed at MXP at 12:37 p.m.

Boeing 777-300ER of LATAM Airlines landing at LHR shutterstock_2109071732

Photo: BoeingMan777 | Shutterstock

The LATAM Airlines jet taxied to the gate without further incident. According to data from Ch-aviation, the aircraft was repaired at MXP and no further flights were scheduled after the July 9 incident.

The website’s data shows that Boeing delivered the 777-300ER to LATAM Airlines on October 23, 2012, shortly after the aircraft made its maiden flight on October 4, 2012. Since then, it has accumulated 41,578 flight hours (FH) and 4,828 flight cycles (FC).

LATAM Brasil transported more than 120,000 passengers to Italy last year

LATAM operates the Boeing 777 with 410 passenger seats on Italian routes.

Five weekly flights from MXP

According to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium, LATAM Airlines was the only airline operating flights from MXP to South America, connecting Milan to its hub at GRU with five weekly flights in July.

During the coming winter season, LATAM Airlines will increase the weekly frequencies from MXP to GRU to six, increasing the weekly seat capacity on the route from 1,895 to 2,274. The weekly available seat kilometers (ASK) will therefore increase from 17.9 million to 21.5 million.

Landing of a Boeing 777-300ER from LATAM Airlines

Photo: Tom Boon | Easy flying

Since Alitalia, the predecessor of ITA Airways, and Air Italy, an airline in which Qatar Airways held a minority stake, stopped their flights to Aeropuerto Internacional de Recife-Guararapes (REC), Pinto Martins International Airport – Fortaleza (FOR) and Ezeiza International Airport (EZE) in 2018, no other airline except LATAM Airlines has served routes to South America from MXP.