An Air Berlin flight made an emergency landing after a huge hole was punched in the metal of one of the wings by flying pieces of rubber.
The pilots had been flying unaware of the problem until radioed by ground crews, who had found the disintegrated remains of one of the plane’s tyres on the runway.
The plane then issued a mayday call and made an emergency landing at Munich. The incident happened on Tuesday aboard a tourist flight between Düsseldorf and the Greek island of Kos, with 171 passengers and seven staff on board the aircraft.
“When the flight took off in Düsseldorf pieces of the tyres broke off and damaged the wing,” a spokesperson for Air Berlin was quoted as saying by Daily Express.
“There was no damage to the plane’s systems and no danger for passengers,” she added. Experts from the Federal Office for Air Accident Investigations (BfU) in Germany will now look into the case.