A Royal Thai Air Force F-5 fighter jet suffered a tire blowout while landing at Ubon Ratchathani Airport on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, stopping the aircraft mid-runway and forcing a temporary closure of the shared civil-military field that sent two inbound flights from Bangkok back to their origin.
The jet, assigned to Squadron 211 of Wing 21 at Ubon Ratchathani, developed the problem at roughly 11:30 a.m. local time as it touched down, according to the Royal Thai Air Force. Air Vice Marshal Charoen Watthanasrimongkol, the RTAF’s deputy spokesman, said the aircraft was a Type 18 Kor fighter — the F-5F, a two-seat variant of the upgraded F-5 TH “Super Tigris” fleet — and that the pilot was unhurt while the airframe sustained only minor damage, Thai PBS reported. Other outlets, including Khaosod and Siam Rath, identified the jet simply as an F-5 TH, the broader upgrade program under which Thailand’s F-5E/F airframes operate.
Unable to taxi clear of the runway after the tire failed, the jet remained stopped on the pavement while airport rescue crews and RTAF engineers moved in to inspect it and clear the area. The Air Force said a burst tire is a type of failure that can occur on any aircraft and may have resulted from a wheel striking an object or other debris on the runway during touchdown, though the exact cause remained under investigation, Khaosod reported.
F-5 tire blowout closes shared runway, grounds Bangkok flights
Ubon Ratchathani Airport shares its single runway with the RTAF’s Wing 21 base, and the closure needed to clear the disabled fighter rippled into the day’s commercial schedule. Thai AirAsia flight FD3374, inbound from Don Mueang, and Thai Vietjet flight VZ220, inbound from Suvarnabhumi, were unable to land while the runway was shut for safety, and both turned back to Bangkok, according to Khaosod and Sin Chew Daily, which cited the RTAF account.
Ground crews cleared the runway and removed all obstructions by roughly 1:30 p.m., restoring normal operations, Khaosod reported. The Air Force issued its public explanation of the incident at around 3:30 p.m., several hours after the tire burst, confirming the field had already returned to normal service.
The episode is a reminder that tire fragments and other debris left on an active runway are a foreign object debris hazard in their own right, requiring a full sweep before flights can safely resume — a risk that is amplified at joint-use fields like Ubon Ratchathani, where Thailand’s Department of Airports and the military share a single strip. FODNews has covered a similar dynamic at a shared civil-military airfield before, where a runway crack forced a comparable scramble to clear and inspect pavement before commercial traffic could resume.
The F-5, originally built by Northrop, has formed the backbone of the RTAF’s lighter fighter fleet for decades. Thailand’s F-5E/F airframes have since been upgraded to the F-5 TH “Super Tigris” standard with modern avionics, a modernization effort that has kept the airframe in frontline service well past its original design life.
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Sources
- Khaosod — “ทอ.แจงเครื่องบินขับไล่ F-5 TH ยางแตกกลางรันเวย์อุบลฯ เร่งเคลียร์ เปิดใช้งานแล้ว” [RTAF explains F-5 TH tire burst mid-runway at Ubon, runway cleared and reopened] (Oct. 7, 2026)
- Thai PBS — “เครื่องบินขับไล่ F-5 ขัดข้องฉุกเฉิน สนามบินอุบลราชธานี – นักบินปลอดภัย” [F-5 fighter jet emergency malfunction at Ubon Ratchathani Airport — pilot safe] (Oct. 7, 2026)
- Siam Rath — “ระทึก! เครื่องบิน F-5 กองบิน 21 อุบลฯ ยางแตกขณะลงจอดกลางรันเวย์” [Tense moment as Wing 21 Ubon F-5 bursts tire landing mid-runway] (Oct. 7, 2026)
- Sin Chew Daily — “泰国战机降落爆胎跑道关闭 2航班被迫折返曼谷” [Thai fighter jet tire bursts on landing, runway closed, 2 flights forced back to Bangkok] (Oct. 8, 2026)
- The Thaiger — “Fighter jet tyre bursts on Ubon runway, diverts Bangkok flights” (Oct. 7, 2026)
