Today I was flying on an AA ticket with a CX operated connection (CX504) between HKG and NRT (3/17/19 @ 9:05AM). I turned on the camera on the IFE to watch the takeoff, which gives a nice view of the the nose gear and runway. Something I don't get when flying American carriers. I planned on recording it, but decided not to (something I'm kicking myself about now). So we start takeoff roll and a few seconds after rotating, the gear starts to retract. I notice something fly off from the general area of the nose gear, but it happened too fast to see what it was.
I didn't notice any shaking or control issues with the plane, so I thought it was water or something that was made more prominent by the bad picture from the camera. A few minutes later I saw the gear extend and then retract again through the camera. After a little bit, I noticed we weren't gaining altitude and of course the IFE shows we leveled off at 9000' and never broke 250kts, even after about 10 minutes post takeoff. You could also hear a loud whistling sounds coming from the front of the plane.
A few minutes later the captain came on and said they were noticing an issue with the gear door not closing all the way and that we were going to return to HKG (they weren't aware of anything flying off of the gear). We circled a bit, then went about 100 miles off shore to dump fuel. After about 45 minutes in the air, we started our descent back to HKG, at which time we got quite a bit of shuddering and control movement once the gear was extended for landing, but we made it down safe.
After taxiing to somewhere in the middle of the apron, we shut down and the pilots announced on the radio that ground crew confirmed the landing gear door had torn off when retracting the gear on takeoff. Ultimately we deplaned and took buses back to the terminal so they could book us all on later flights.
Pilots and crew did an excellent job and have to commend them, they remained calm and everybody else on the plane followed.
Anywho, just thought I'd share the incident.
Plane: B-HNG (777-367)
Flightradar24 Track
FlightAware Track
Here's a photo of the plane with the missing landing gear door.
