Created Wednesday, Apr 16th 2025 19:43Z, last updated Wednesday, May 21st 2025 20:00Z
A Frontier Airlines Airbus A321-200N, registration N607FR performing flight
F9-3506 from Orlando,FL (USA) to San Juan (Puerto Rico) with 228 people on board, touched down hard on San Juan's runway 10 at 21:40L (01:40Z Apr 16th) and went around. During climb out the left hand engine (PW1133G) emitted a continuous streak of flames for several seconds. The airport subsequently closed both runways initially advising crews of arriving aircraft there was debris on the runways subsequently advising there had been a hard landing on one runway and the aircraft is now going to use the other runway, the landing runway is being inspected for debris. The aircraft subsequently entered a hold to work checklists associated with the landing gear. The aircraft positioned for a low approach to San Juan's runway 08 about 27 minutes later and landed without further incident on runway 08 about 40 minutes after the balked landing. The aircraft vacated the runway at the end and stopped on the parallel taxiway. Runway 08 was reopened after landing, while runway 10 remained closed for some more time.
The FAA reported: "AIRCRAFT ATTEMPTING TO LAND, STRUCK THE RUNWAY HARD DAMAGING THE LANDING GEAR, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO."
Passengers reported there had been a shocking hard touchdown, then there were moments of panic on board as the left hand engine was emitting fire.
The airport clarified there had been no fire, the incident is under investigation.
On Apr 25th 2025 the NTSB reported: "While landing on runway 10, the nose landing gear made violent contact with the runway. The landing gear was damaged and a tyre went missing. The crew initiated a go-around, and a fire broke out on engine number 1." The occurrence was rated an incident and is being investigated by the NTSB.
The aircraft is still on the ground in San Juan on Apr 28th 2025.
On May 21st 2025 the NTSB released their preliminary report summarizing the sequence of events:
According to the flight crew, the first officer (FO) was the pilot flying, and the captain was the pilot monitoring during the night flight to SJU. The approach was stable but required a slight lateral correction to maintain centerline while descending through about 150 to 100 feet above ground level (agl) on approach to runway 10.
An aural RETARD alert is designed to occur at a radio altitude (RA) of 20 ft on manual landing to advise the flight crew to reduce the thrust levers to idle. The FO recalled that during the approach, she brought the thrust levers back to idle at 20 ft RA while the RETARD aural alert sounded.
The captain recalled that the landing flare began normally but became high at about 15 ft RA. The FO stated that around 15 ft RA, the captain noted that the aircraft was too high, so she corrected with a shallow descent and then a gradual flare. As the aircraft was about to touch down, the captain called for a go-around. The captain stated that he believed the aircraft was “running out of flying speed quickly, as the throttles were retarded and the pitch attitude was increasing” so he assumed control. He recalled that the airplane was slightly nose down with the thrust at the takeoff/go-around (TOGA) setting when the airplane then touched down firmly.
The captain stated that during the go-around, they heard a loud bang coming from under the fuselage and the FO called out that an engine failure was displayed on the electronic centralized aircraft monitor (ECAM) display.
The air traffic control tower (ATCT) controller reported an engine fire, but according to the flight crew, they only had an indication of an engine failure. Unsure of the damage sustained, the captain asked for a foreign object debris (FOD) sweep of the runway and a description of any debris found. Some metal and tire debris were found on the runway and reported to the flight crew.
The captain stated that he flew a low pass by the ATCT to see if the controllers could determine if all three landing gear appeared to be down. The ATCT controller reported that the landing gear was intact, and the flight crew prepared for a visual approach to runway 8. At touchdown, the airplane behaved normally so the captain elected to clear the runway and set the parking brake as the fire department approached to inspect the number one engine for any fire. No fire was present, and the captain elected to coordinate for airstairs to deplane the aircraft rather than using the evacuation slides. He felt there was no threat to life and the slides posed a greater danger to passengers than the airstairs. He also noted that there were 8 wheelchair passengers on board. The passengers were unloaded via airstairs and bussed to the terminal.
Related NOTAM:
!TJSJ 04/193 SJU RWY 10/28 CLSD 2504160206-2504160400
Related Flight:
F93506,
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