Nobody was hurt, no other aircraft got involved, no flights were delayed. AENA confirmed the tyre had come off a Ryanair jet and that operations continued as normal. But if you've ever wondered whether airport ground crew earn their money, Saturday night's answer is a pretty firm yes.
El momento en el que un neumático de la compañía Ryanair atraviesa parte de la zona operativa del aeropuerto de Lanzarote durante este fin de semana. El suceso hizo que varios vehículos de trabajadores del aeropuerto se movilizaran para evitar que la goma siguiera rodando…
— RTVC (@RTVCes) July 13, 2026
What Went Down on the Tarmac
It happened Saturday 11 July, evening time, on the platform area at Lanzarote César Manrique. The tyre came loose from a Ryanair aircraft and started rolling. One of the ground crew spotted it, jumped in a service van, and went after it. What followed was a few minutes of pure slapstick as the driver caught up with the tyre and then had to work out how to actually stop it, which he did by nudging it with the van and effectively dribbling it back to a safe corner of the apron.
Spanish broadcaster RTVC picked the footage up straight from the Live Lanzarote Webcam and had it out on X within hours. There aren't many jobs where dribbling a runaway aircraft tyre with a van counts as a good day at work, but for the driver in question, that was Saturday.
Why This Isn't as Funny as It Looks
Right, the video is genuinely brilliant. But strip the comedy out and think for a second about what a loose tyre could hit on a working airport apron. Fuel trucks. Other aircraft. Baggage vehicles. People. Any one of those turns a funny clip into a story with a very different tone. The reason we're all laughing today rather than reading a serious incident report is because the ground crew reacted in seconds, not minutes.
That's the bit worth remembering. The guy in the van didn't wait to ring anyone or check a manual, he saw a wheel rolling where wheels shouldn't be and went after it. Airport ground handling isn't the most glamorous job in aviation but it's the layer that catches this stuff before it becomes news for the wrong reasons.
Ryanair Are Having a Week of It
Bad luck comes in threes, or so they say. Ryanair have been having one of those weeks. Earlier this month a passenger nearly got sucked out of a window when engine debris smashed the glass. On Tuesday a Manchester to Alicante flight had to divert into France for an emergency landing. And now the Lanzarote wheel. None of them are connected, all of them ended safely, but the airline's press team must be dreading opening their inbox at the moment.
British Airways had one of their A350 wheels come off leaving Las Vegas back in January, so it's not just Ryanair that occasionally sheds bits mid-airport. Aircraft are built with enough redundancy in the landing gear that losing a wheel is more embarrassing than dangerous. Still not what you want to see on the webcam though.
Lanzarote Airport Loves the Camera
César Manrique has a bit of form for this kind of thing. A few weeks back a Jet2 flight from Birmingham had to pull out of a landing at the last second, climbing away in a proper dramatic go-around that ended up all over YouTube. Between the trade winds coming off the Atlantic, the volcanic backdrop and the live webcam pointing straight at the apron, anything unusual on the tarmac tends to get filmed and shared within the hour.
For plane spotters and anyone who enjoys aviation content, the airport is one of the more entertaining places in Europe to point a camera. For the ground crew, it must occasionally feel like being watched by half a million bored tourists on holiday. On Saturday's evidence, they cope with it just fine.
Flying With Ryanair to Lanzarote Any Time Soon?
You'll be fine. The plane in question will have been checked over, the ground crew handled it, and the airport is running exactly the same summer schedule it was running last week. Ryanair still fly multiple times a day from most UK and Irish airports and the wider safety record is what it is, which is generally good. Fly with them next week and you'll almost certainly have a completely uneventful trip, which is the best kind.
What you might find on YouTube is a Lanzarote airport worker who's about to become briefly famous for the strangest bit of driving he's done all year. Give the man a raise. He earned it.
