Cathay Pacific Airbus A350 sinks into ground
A Cathay Pacific Airbus A350-900 has literally become grounded after the aircraft began to sink into the ground at Tel Aviv Airport.
The aircraft, registered B-LRX, was scheduled to operate flight CX676 to Hong Kong when the left main landing gear began to sink into the taxiway during pushback.
Due to the nature of the incident, passengers were removed from the flight to be put on another flight. The aircraft remained in place for a few hours afterwards.
The cause of the incident is likely a minor defect with the ground, which could have been caused by something simple like a sinkhole from inadequate drainage or a weakened asphalt base.
Information will be updated as more details are released.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the Isreali tarmac construction and everything to do with a pushback not remaining within the confines of the defined hard strength pavement. The pavement worked perfectly fine.
It’s quite apparent that the aircraft has been pushed onto an area that is clearly marked as low strength pavement. The solid yellow line running perpendicular to the double yellow taxiway edge markings under the nose gear in the last picture is the low strength pavement marking.
Just wondering if this is a quality issue with Israeli tarmac construction or the weight distributed per wheel might exceed published standards, especially under full load for long flight. There are many calculations that consider NOT the weight of the aircraft but weight per wheel. Some models get a more complicated gear in extended versions.
Standard Israeli quality level