In the list of the egregiously expensive stuff you have to buy to maintain an airplane, tires barely rise to the level of annoyance. But when the shop calls and says you need a new left main, if your reaction is, “didn’t we just do that?” you’re hardly alone. You may very well have traded your last car before it needed new tires. Why isn’t it the same with airplanes?
It’s a good question and one we recently posed to several experts in the aircraft tire industry. The answer is that airplane tires are to modern car tires as apples are to kumquats. Other than both being round-you hope-car tires and airplane tires don’t have much in common because they perform radically different jobs. Car tires have been driven relentlessly forward by competition and technology; airplane tires, not so much.