The wings are the most important things for flying. However, an aircraft would also be no use without its wheels. The two nose wheels and the 16 main wheels of a Jumbo jet, for example, have to carry the enormous burden of up to nearly 400 tons when taking off or landing.

The tyre rubber is thereby subjected to extreme temperature fluctuations from minus 60° Centigrade at an altitude of 10,000 metres to extremely high temperatures when landing in the hottest regions of the world. When an aircraft touches down, the tyres are accelerated from a standing start to typically 260 km/h. That means from one moment to the next an increase from zero to 1,100 revolutions per minute.

After about 180 landings of a Boeing 747-400, the wheels come back for a tyre change in the Frankfurt wheel workshop of Lufthansa Technik. Major repairs right through to the complete overhaul of a wheel are also carried out there.

Thus, 18,000 completely fitted wheels leave workshop annually, from the 185 kg main wheel of a modern Jumbo jet to the tyres of the Ju 52.