Australia's transport safety watchdog has found Virgin Blue maintenance staff failed to notice cracks appearing around the wheel of one of its planes.

After an Adelaide to Melbourne flight landed in October 2009, Virgin Blue crew noticed the Boeing 737 aircraft was hard to taxi and required more power and steering than normal.

An inspection revealed one of the plane's inner wheel hubs and bearing mounts had broken away from the wheel assembly due to fatigue cracking - an emerging issue for 737s at the time of the incident.

Releasing its final report on Jan. 20, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) found the fatigue cracks were not detected during a tyre change inspection carried out in September 2009, despite Boeing alerting customers to the potential problem.

The ATSB found that Virgin Blue was in the process of reviewing and incorporating the changes into its own maintenance schedules at the time of the incident.

It also said that immediately after the incident the company reviewed information supplied by the wheel and aircraft manufacturers in relation to the problem and removed from service 10 wheels potentially at risk of breaking.

Virgin Blue also changed its wheel inspection procedure to include more frequent ultrasonic examinations.

Meanwhile, the wheel manufacturer made a change to the design of new production wheel components.