Aircraft manufacturers look again at radial tyres: aircraft operators slow to adopt radial tyres,...

Tyre makers still have a lot of work to do to establish radial tyres as the technology of choice for the aviation tyre industry, industry executives believe.

More than 20 years after their introduction, radials have gained only 17 percent of the aircraft tyre market. This comes in spite of the fact that they are typically 20-percent lighter and able to survive 50 percent more landings than crossply tyres.

The low penetration rate is mainly down to the fact that radials require landing gear specially designed to deal with the loadings and so are generally onl