Posted on 04/19/2025 8:21:52 PM PDT by george76
Passengers were left in fear for their lives when a pilot encountered landing difficulties while operating a Frontier Airlines flight bound for Puerto Rico.
Frontier Flight 5306 from Orlando was carrying 228 passengers and approaching Luis Marín Muñoz International Airport in San Juan on Monday when its landing was aborted at the last second.
The Airbus A321 encountered a 'mechanical problem' when one of the wheels broke off the front landing gear, the airline told El Nuevo Día newspaper.
FlightAware - the flight tracking company - showed that aircraft flew around the airport four times and made a second landing attempt.
The airplane was about 500 feet from another runway and continued its flight path, circling around again prior to landing at 10:54 p.m.
Luis Irizarry, who has investigated other aviation accidents, told WAPA television that the aircraft was not stable on its first approach.
'The plane was coming in, but it was in an unstable pattern. It wasn't stabilized for landing,' Izarrry claimed, citing information he gathered from sources on the ground. 'While trying to land, it hit the runway with its nose wheel.'
The expert said the wheel broke from the left side and some of its piece ended in the engine.
...
he co-pilot had recently started flying with the low-budget airline
'The information we have is that the person flying was the copilot, and the copilot was a new pilot for the airline. When I say new, I mean a young pilot, with a thousand or so flight hours,' he said.
'Perhaps it was his first flight, flying solo and not with a supervisor or a trainer, and that's the situation we fear. That's why the plane wasn't stable because he didn't have it under control.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Airbus A321
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Not Boeing this time!
Fear for their lives....oh the horror.
Well, it just lost one wheel. I think they have 2 on the front gear. But it sounds like the Delta pilot that forgot to flair and ended up upside down.
So the Spirit Airways passengers stopped beating each other long enough to focus on the wheel falling off? Amazing.
Chaos in the cockpit sounds like Endeavor airlines — the DEI outfit that flipped the plane upside down in Canada.
Oh, it IS DEI. They advertise as having no male pilots, by company directive.
With two lonely wheels, and a plane in the field.
AA landing is almost always a grease job or a botched embarrassment beginning 3 miles outside the marker.
At three miles outside the marker the air speed, altitude and power settings should be at the exact appropriate settings. All check lists should be complete and set as required.
At the marker the crew needs only to drop the gear and make minor adjustments to the power setting to compensate for changes in the wind at the lower altitudes.
Constant practice at this, even in the very best VFR conditions, will make approaches to minimums a piece of cake.
The alternative is pieces of aluminum and they do not digest well.
It landed wheels down, then rolled on to the top. You can literally see it in the video.
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