A Frontier Airlines aircraft had a rather noteworthy landing in Las Vegas yesterday, which is both scary, and a reminder of how safe and well built aircraft are.
In this post:
Frontier jet lands in Las Vegas in flames
This incident happened on Saturday, October 5, 2024, and involves Frontier Airlines flight F91326, flying from San Diego (SAN) to Las Vegas (LAS). The flight was operated by a nine-year-old Airbus A321 with the registration code N701FR, and had 197 people onboard, including 190 passengers and seven crew members.
Details about the incident are fairly limited, so let’s go over what we do know. At 3:10PM local time, after a short 51-minute flight, the jet touched down on runway 26L at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport.
In video footage posted online, you can see massive flames coming from the aircraft’s right rear gear. The aircraft then came to a stop on the runway, and emergency workers sprayed the aircraft to extinguish any flames and prevent a further fire.
Once the situation was under control, passengers were evacuated from the jet via stairs, and there were no injuries. As you’d expect, the aircraft is still on the ground in Las Vegas, and I imagine it’ll be out of service for some time.
What actually happened here?!?
We don’t yet know exactly how this situation unfolded. Was there already a fire before the plane touched down, or did it catch fire as soon as it landed?
The airline states that “the cause of the incident is currently under investigation,” and that “the pilots detected smoke and declared an emergency.” Meanwhile a spokesperson for the airport states that the flight “experienced a hard landing.”
According to a passenger on the flight who was interviewed for the local news in Las Vegas, the crew didn’t inform passengers of any emergency prior to landing. He claims the landing was indeed hard, and that he saw the fire trucks as they landed, and assumed it wasn’t for their plane.
So clearly the issue was discovered before landing, based on the presence of emergency vehicles as soon as the plane landed.
I’m sure an investigation will reveal how the incident went from the crew detecting smoke, to the gear being on fire. While there may have been a hard landing, that clearly wasn’t the root cause of the issue. Thank goodness this had a positive ending, with no injuries.
Bottom line
A Frontier Airlines Airbus jet had an emergency landing in Las Vegas yesterday. The pilots reportedly declared an emergency due to smoke being detected, and then somehow that quickly evolved into the plane’s gear (at a minimum) catching fire upon touchdown. I’m curious to see what an investigation reveals about the cause of this incident.
What do you make of this Frontier Airlines Las Vegas landing?
Age and history of the aircraft are always given when it's irrelevant. Here, of course, we are left to wonder.
Couldn't have happened to a better airline.