PMCG appears to state that he was departing from the Polderbaan and the flying coffin in front blew a tyre, therefore, I guess it was on departure also.

About the flat spots, they do flat spot slightly but not too much. The tyres are designed to shed up to 500 grams of rubber on touchdown, hence the blue smoke from the undercarriage on landing. It is the vertical side walls of the tyre that are carrying the load and get hot through being squashed at the bottom of the wheel revolution and unsquashed at the top. This puts energy in as rubber is not perfect. Energy equals heat. Now do lots of tight turns and really twist hell out of the carcus.

The friction heat on the horizontal contact patch of the tyre is an issue but not a great one. The tread is reasonably thick and lots of contact with cold tarmac (and probably wet at AMS, same 5h1t at LGW, only 24 hours later).

They used to retread up to 8 times but there are much stricter controls on it after the accidents in the late 70s and early 80s. The flying coffin was studied widely as it suffered quite badly on a couple of occasions. Airbus cannot be that busy on the A330 production line that the NW flying coffins can last that much longer, surely.

Will they ever let me into AMS again after releasing the trade secrets like this...

What about building the ATC tower so high that it goes into the clouds before the pilots have to worry about low visibility landings and that is a major cause of delay ? I can feel a whole new can of worms being opened at this very moment in time...

May the status points be with you...