i saw a picture on airliners.net of an aircraft with a puncuter and it really looked like the captin was getting a spare out of what seemed to be the aft cargo hold, the aircraft was a a330, do aircraft really carry spare tires?

Maybe on a large aircraft like the 330, they might carry them to an outstation where no such parts would be available. The airline that I work for has COMAT, which is company material. Basically if something breaks, they send the part on another airplane so it can get fixed, if they don't already have the part at the outstation.

I can remember way back when QANTAS first started operating B707's that they used to carry a couple of boxes of flight spares on certain routes where pool spares were unavailable. It was part of the inspection check to confirm the boxes were onboard and that the seals were not broken. Most airlines (flying same type and routes) were part of a pool group ( eg. QANTAS,BOAC,AIR INDIA,SINGAPORE AIRLINES) that had spares strategically located at the various route stations and any group member could use the group spares to get back to main base where the group spare was replaced with one of the airlines own spares and returned to the route station where it was originally based. The use of pool spares was NOT free but quite expensive. Even so it was cheaper than each airline stocking their own spares or grounding of an aircraft awaiting the flying in of spare parts. Roger

oh right thanks for ur help, lol i found it hard to belive that a airliner would carry a spare wheel like my dads car lol