B737 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Total 2459; Flight Crew Type 2459
Situational Awareness
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; General Maintenance Action
Aircraft
Normal landing and rollout. Turned right onto taxiway; heard and felt a loud thump; like running over an extra-large taxi centerline light. We were on centerline at all times. We stopped taxi at the gate lead in line; and switched to ops freq to request guide man. We heard another aircraft reporting to ops that our right outboard wheel had departed the aircraft and they saw it rolling [down the taxiway]. Ramp was empty due to lightning at this time although storm had passed and it was VMC. We set parking brake and shut down engines to wait for maintenance and possible tow in. A short while later; ramp opened up. They pinned the gear and slowly towed us in to the gate under maintenance supervision. Passenger eyewitness reports say the wheel was smoking and emitted steam when it rolled into the pond adjacent to [the taxiway]. Maintenance thinks the brakes locked up but we did not have any indications that anything was abnormal except for the thump we felt. Aircraft taxied the same after the thump as well. Luckily that was a short distance. And fortunately the wheel separated away from the ramp; on an empty taxiway and the tire rolled into a pond.
After normal touchdown; the aircraft entered a heavy rain shower about halfway through the landing rollout. The Captain used normal breaking and pulled off the runway and taxied westbound toward the ramp. After turning onto Taxiway; we heard and felt the aircraft bump over something like a taxiway centerline light; and we commented to each other that we probably taxied right over a light. There were no ramp personnel at [the gate]; so I switched to the Operations frequency. A pilot from another aircraft was just then telling Ops that the right outboard main landing gear tire departed the aircraft and rolled off the taxiway and into a pond. Maintenance and ramp crew towed the aircraft into [the gate]. Flight attendants and passengers reported seeing something moving away from the aircraft on each side and landing in an adjacent pond followed by steam coming from the items.
B737 flight crew reported that a main landing gear wheel departed during turnout to taxiway after their landing rollout.