A Boeing 777 operated by LATAM Brasil suffered a serious tail strike as it was departing from Milan Malpensa on Tuesday afternoon, leading to an emergency landing back at Milan, where the 11-year-old aircraft has remained since.
The incident was captured on an airfield surveillance camera, which shows the plane blowing up dust and smoke as the tail dragged along the runway for around seven seconds as the aircraft struggled to get off the ground.
Once it was finally airborne, the pilots quickly stopped the climb at just 6,000 feet and then entered a holding pattern in order to dump fuel before returning to Milan to make an emergency landing.
Thankfully, the aircraft landed without incident, but the scale of the damage could mean that the plane will be grounded in Italy for quite some time, so repairs can be carried out.
As a reference, an Air France Airbus A350 suffered a serious tailstrike incident as it was landing at Toronto Pearson Airport back in January 2024 and was grounded for months as extensive repairs were made to the stricken aircraft.
The aircraft was only deemed airworthy in June when it was allowed to be ferried back to Paris but has remained on the ground at Charles De Gaulle Airport ever since.
The Boeing 777 involved in Tuesday’s incident has had quite an eventful past, and in 2018, it was involved in a serious emergency landing when it suffered a serious and widespread electrical fault as it was flying across the Atlantic from Sao Paulo to London Heathrow.
In fact, the electrical issue was so significant that an emergency Ram Air Turbine (RAT) was deployed to generate some electrical supply before it made an overweight landing in Belo Horizonte.
The problems were so bad on LA8084 that passengers reported all the lights and power went out in the cabin, while the pilots were unable to dump fuel because of the electrical issues.
