The Porter E195-E2 tire separation went unnoticed by everyone tasked with spotting it. Neither the flight crew nor airport ground services flagged that a Porter Airlines Embraer 195-E2 had lost a main landing-gear tire on takeoff from Edmonton on February 22. The first person to see it was a passenger looking out the window. After rotation, she told a flight attendant that something had come off the airplane.
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board confirmed the sequence in a bulletin published in late April. The aircraft, registration C-GZQM, continued on to Toronto and declared an emergency. It landed safely on runway 15L with all 94 occupants uninjured. Investigators want to know what damaged the left main landing-gear axle. They also want to answer a quieter question. How did a tire detach from a regional jet on a major Canadian runway with nobody on the ground noticing?
What happened on flight PD-402
Porter flight PD-402 departed Edmonton’s runway 12 bound for Toronto Pearson, according to the TSB and a separate account compiled by The Aviation Herald. After rotation, a passenger told cabin crew they may have seen a tire leave the aircraft.
The flight continued en route. As the jet approached Toronto, the crew asked controllers to inspect the landing gear from the tower. Controllers confirmed the left outboard main tire was gone.
The crew flew a missed approach and declared a PAN PAN, later upgrading to a MAYDAY. They then entered a holding pattern to burn off fuel. Airport rescue and firefighting crews stood by. The Embraer landed without further incident on 15L and stopped on the runway. Passengers disembarked via stairs.
Investigators trace the Porter E195-E2 tire separation
Maintenance crews towed the aircraft clear and then found damage to the left main landing-gear axle, according to the TSB bulletin reported by FlightGlobal. Crews later recovered most of the missing components at Edmonton.
The Transportation Safety Board says Embraer and the landing-gear manufacturer are working with Porter to determine why the axle failed. Porter took delivery of the aircraft new at the end of 2023. That makes it just over two years old at the time of the incident. It returned to service on March 9.
The E195-E2 carries brake-temperature indication as standard, but tire-pressure monitoring is optional. In this case, the crew had no warning until the passenger spoke up.
The runway-FOD angle
For runway operators, the more uncomfortable detail is what happened on the ground at Edmonton. A tire separated on takeoff. So did, by Porter’s own account, “most of the missing components” of a wheel and axle assembly. Those parts stayed on or near runway 12 long enough for recovery teams to find them later. Yet the airport’s ground inspection process did not flag them before the next operation.
That is the textbook definition of runway foreign object debris. Large, dense, high-energy material left behind by one aircraft becomes a hazard for the next. A free-rolling main-gear tire and rim, plus axle fragments, can damage tires on a following departure. Engine ingestion and strikes against control surfaces are also possible. FAA Advisory Circular AC 150/5210-24 classifies aircraft tires and wheel components among the higher-risk FOD categories.
Detection failures of this kind are not unique to Edmonton. The common thread is straightforward. Ground-side situational awareness still depends heavily on visual inspections and on the surveillance picture available to controllers and airfield ops.
Industry analysts have flagged automated detection as a growth area for that reason. Forecasts show the global airport FOD-detection market roughly doubling by 2031 as AI cameras and radar enter service.
What’s next
The TSB has classified the event as an incident rather than an accident. A more detailed report will follow once Embraer and the landing-gear manufacturer finish their root-cause analysis. Edmonton International Airport has not publicly commented on its runway inspection sequence that morning.
For airport operators, the takeaway is straightforward. Departing-aircraft FOD is real, and it can be substantial in size. Human-factor detection still does a meaningful share of the work — by ground crews, by ATC, and occasionally by passengers.
Sources
- FlightGlobal — Passenger alerted crew after Porter E195-E2 lost tyre on take-off (David Kaminski-Morrow, 30 April 2026)
- The Aviation Herald — Incident: Porter E295 at Edmonton and Toronto on Feb 22nd 2026 (Simon Hradecky)
- Transportation Safety Board of Canada — incident bulletin (forthcoming preliminary report)
- FAA Advisory Circular 150/5210-24 — Airport Foreign Object Debris (FOD) Management
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