Last Sunday, a Aeromexico Boeing 737 MAX suffered a wing tip strike in Mexico City during the landing phase.
We will explore in this article why this happened, as well as the repercussions from that.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
AM495 – Seattle-Mexico City…
Aeromexico flight AM495 is a routine scheduled flight between Seattle and Mexico City.
The aircraft involved in the wing tip strike is registered as XA-CCN.
As per data from Planespotters.net, XA-CCN is a 2.2 year old Boeing 737 MAX 8 that was delivered to the airline in March 2022.
Of the 737 MAX 8 variant, Aeromexico has 34 of them in the fleet, of which all are in active service.
Furthermore, the average fleet age for the variant at the airline currently stands at 4.3 years.
AM495 departed Seattle at 0810 local time on March 24, and proceeded south to Mexico City.
Furthermore, RadarBox data shows that the aircraft commenced a go-around from it’s initial landing attempt.
On the second attempt, the aircraft landed without further incident.
Reporting from The Aviation Herald confirms that the left wing tip struck the runway, causing the go-around.
It was understood that this was due to the gusty winds at Mexico City which caused this incident.
Aircraft Grounded for 24 Hours…
After landing into Mexico City, XA-CCN was grounded for around 24 hours, whilst the fixes were made.
It is unclear what the extent of the damage was from the wing tip strike, with no imagery released as of yet.
The next day, XA-CCN was brought back into commercial service, operating a flight to La Paz.
Since then, the aircraft has been fully operational also serving the likes of New York & San Francisco.
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