There are often aircraft landings that may feel hard to passengers, but that are well within the structural limits of an aircraft. Then there’s what happened to a Frontier Airlines jet a couple of days ago, where it landed so hard that it caused engine issues, as reported by The Aviation Herald. Ouch.
In this post:
Frontier jet suffers hard landing and go around in San Juan
This incident happened on Tuesday, April 15, 2025, and involves Frontier flight F93506, scheduled to operate from Orlando (MCO) to San Juan (SJU). The flight was operated by a two-year-old Airbus A321neo with the registration code N607FR (ugh, such a new plane!), and had 228 people onboard.
The 1,189-mile flight was scheduled to depart at 6:45PM and arrive at 9:38PM. Most of the flight down to San Juan was routine, except the approach. At 9:40PM, the aircraft made contact with runway 10 at San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport.
The landing was extremely hard and caused the plane to bounce, so the pilots decided to execute a go around. While the aircraft climbed out, streaks of flames were emitted from the left engine, as it seemingly ingested or hit something that got loose due to how rough the contact with the runway was.
The airport subsequently closed all runways, over concerns of there being debris, which could cause a safety issue for other aircraft. This even caused some diversions.
After the initial landing attempt, the jet spent an additional 40 minutes in the air. The pilots first worked through checklists, then they did a low approach over the airport so that a visual inspection could be performed of the aircraft, to determine how bad the damage was.
The aircraft finally ended up landing at 10:20PM. Stairs were pulled up to the plane, and passengers were deplaned directly from the runway. What’s wild is that one of the two wheels at the nose gear was missing. One wonders what exactly happened there.
A hard landing is one thing, but did the forward gear touch down as well, and then the wheel was ingested into the engine, or how exactly did this all go down?
Let’s see what an investigation of this incident reveals
As you’d expect, the aircraft hasn’t flown in the roughly 36 hours since this incident took place. I’m curious to see for just how long this aircraft remains grounded.
Obviously it’s missing a nose wheel, which is kind of an issue, but that can be replaced pretty quickly. The bigger question involves how much damage there was to the engine (did the engine ingest the nose wheel, or…?), and if there’s any structural damage beyond that.
No one wants this to happen to any aircraft, but it’s especially rough that it was such a new planes. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is now investigating this incident.
Bottom line
A Frontier Airlines Airbus A321neo had a major incident while landing in San Juan. The jet touched down so hard that one of the nose wheels ended up falling off, and streaks of flames came out of the left engine. The aircraft then performed a go around, before coming back in to land around 40 minutes later. This shut down the airport for quite some time, and passengers were evacuated on the runway.
What do you make of this Frontier incident in San Juan?
@Ben ---> Why is this worse if the plane is a new one or one with some hours on it? I'm not trying to be difficult, but it makes NO difference whether it was a 3-year old A321neo or a 20-year old 737-800. It's a horrible and frightening experience for anyone on ANY plane, regardless of aircraft manufacturer, the age of the plane, its size/capacity (other than the larger the capacity, the more pax get freaked out),
I took it to mean that it sucks to wreck your new car v a 20 year old car. Same analogy but for aircraft.
Are you proud to be an American, where at least you know you’re free (to die in a plane crash)?
Can be seen as another example of how safely aircraft are built nowadays that despite parts of the tyre going in the engine and the flames, they were still able to take their time to circle, and land comparatively normally.
The old expression 'the wheels came off' comes to mind.
Why the runway de-planing, though? Seems unnecessary unless they were unable to maneuver to the gate with just one engine...
Because of losing one nose wheel? Unable to turn?
Front left wheel came off and was ingested into the #1 engine.
I am curious to hear from pilot OMAAT readers as to why the plane had to go around when it already touched down - bouncing for me means one or two "bounces". What benefit was there to go around? I am genuinely curious to hear from the the experts (pilots). Thank you
You default to an established procedure. It's like a single engine out on take-off after passing the go-no go point -- look up balanced field distance -- you proceed exactly as you would for the first minute after wheels up.
@Lee: Thank you for the explanation!
Because trying to salvage a landing from a high bounce have caused many a crash.
@Dan77W: Thank you for the explanation!
In flight school we're taught that we can ALWAYS go around. If it's not right, don't force it, go around instead.
@Em: Thank you!
That's a little much even for a Navy landing.
Front wheel came off on impact? The pilot definitely got that one wrong!!