American Airlines flight 1586 on its way to Toronto blew a tire on its takeoff from LAX earlier today, requiring them to return to the airport. As you might already know, however, you can’t land an aircraft with a full tank of gas — it’s just too hard on the brakes — so the pilots had to kill some time.
As a result, instead of the pleasant transcontinental flight that flight 1586 passengers were expecting, the aircraft ended up circling around Catalina island for a little while, burning jet fuel and offering a nice tour of the off shore vacation island. In the end, the flight landed safely and the passengers were sent out about five hours late. I would have much preferred a circling tour of the Grand Canyon, but I guess that was too far away.
All standard procedure for a blown out tire though. From the flight map above courtesy of FlightAware.com though, it looks like a boring afternoon for some 130 passengers.
Check out the AA1586 flight on FlightAware for other interesting tidbits about the flight.