A WestJet aircraft suffered a hard landing yesterday at one of the world’s most popular airports for aviation geeks, and it caused an operational mess, as reported by The Aviation Herald.
In this post:
WestJet Boeing 737 gets stuck on SXM runway after landing
This incident happened yesterday (Sunday, September 7, 2025), and involves WestJet flight WS2276, which was operating from Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) to Saint Maarten Princess Juliana International Airport (SXM). A 17-year-old Boeing 737-800 with the registration code C-GWSR was used for this service, and there were 164 people onboard.
The 2,012-mile flight was routine, until it came time to land on runway 10, located just past the famous Maho Beach. After a 4hr48min flight, as the plane touched down on the runway at 1:28PM, its right landing gear collapsed. The pilots managed to keep the plane on the runway, and brought it to a stop on the nose gear, left main gear, and right engine case.
The aircraft was then evacuated via slides, and fortunately there were no injuries (presumably the evacuation was called over concerns of a fire resulting from a fuel spill). This incident then shut down the airport for an extended period of time, causing a bunch of diversions and cancelations, given that the airport has a single runway.
As you’d expect, heavy equipment needs to be used to remove the plane from the runway, since engine cases don’t exactly roll well. 😉 Currently the expectation is that the airport will reopen around the middle of the day today (Monday), but that remains subject to change.
Below you can see a video of the plane landing. If something like this is going to happen, it’s at least convenient it happened at this airport, since there are always plenty of cameras pointed toward the runway.
Then below is a video from inside the cabin.
And below is a video of the evacuation.
This isn’t something that’s just going to buff right out, so don’t expect this plane to be flying again any time soon, given the amount of damage to the engine, wing, gear, etc.
What went wrong with this landing?!
If you just watch the video, it doesn’t actually look particularly rough, at least compared to many other hard landings that we see. Understandably, many people may be surprised that this is the kind of an incident where a gear collapse happens.
It does look like the pilots flared quite late, and then made a correction at the last second to avoid landing on the left gear. However, that doesn’t look like something so bad that it should cause a gear collapse, but who knows.
This is hardly the first time something like this has happened on a Boeing 737. For example, in August 2023, we saw Alaska flight AS1288 have virtually the same thing happen at Santa Ana Airport (SNA), whereby the left main landing gear collapsed and punctured the left wing. That was determined to be due to a trunnion pin failure, so that could be a factor here as well.
Before that, in December 2019, we saw United flight UA2429 suffer a gear issue at Denver Airport (DEN), also involving the left main gear. That was also determined to be due to a pin failure.
737s have a fair number of pin failures, and that may very well be a factor here as well. Essentially a slightly harder than normal landing (but still within typical operating limits) can trigger these failures. We’ll see what an investigation reveals…
Bottom line
A WestJet Boeing 737 flying to Princess Juliana International Airport suffered a right main gear collapse during landing. The plane became disabled on the runway, and caused the airport to shut down for at least a full day.
While the landing maybe looked a bit rougher than you’d hope, from a distance, it doesn’t look like something you’d expect to cause a gear collapse. It seems possible that there may have been a pin failure here, so we’ll see what an investigation determines.
What do you make of this WestJet Boeing 737 gear collapse?
Congratulations to the crew who handled this incident so successfully. Any landing which one walks away from is a good landing.
What I find interesting about this is that someone was filming it. Seems a lot of landings are recorded these days.
Maho beach next to the airport is an aviation geek loud plane spotting place. Somebody else probably could explain it better
Kinda embarrassing if you made a mistake in front of all these spectators. Especially when 747 can land easily.