Created Wednesday, May 4th 2022 17:05Z, last updated Wednesday, May 4th 2022 17:05Z
A Frontier Airlines Airbus A321-200, registration N717FR performing flight
F9-1187 from Portland,ME to Orlando,FL (USA) with 225 passengers and 7 crew, was on final approach to Orlando's runway 18L when tower advised about a windshear alert 15 knots loss on 1nm final and cleared the flight to land. The crew continued, encountered windshear and touched down hard at 13:29L (17:29Z), performed a bounce recovery and went around. The aircraft positioned for another approach now for runway 35R about 25 minutes after the balked landing and landed without further incident.
The occurrence aircraft remained on the ground in Orlando until Dec 13th 2019, made a test flight on Dec 13th 2020 and returned to service on Dec 14th 2019.
On Aug 13th 2019 The Aviation Herald received information the aircraft touched down at almost +4G and suffered a tail strike as result of windshear on short final close to ground. The damage is being assessed, it does not appears impossible the damage needs to be assessed beyond repair.
On Feb 6th 2020 the NTSB reported the aircraft suffered a tail strike during landing as result of wind shear, went around and landed on parallel runway. The occurrence was rated an accident, the NTSB is investigating.
On May 4th 2022 the NTSB released their final report concluding the probable causes were:
Encountering gusty conditions at a low altitude during landing and the crew’s decision to do a go-around at a low altitude with an excessive rotation rate.
The NTSB analysed:
The final approach was considered stabilized. At about 40 feet above ground level, a significant tailwind gust of about 25 knots was experienced, creating a loss of airspeed. The loss of airspeed resulted in a loss of lift at a low height and led to a hard touchdown. At about 10 feet above the runway (and before the hard touchdown) the flight crew set “TOGA” thrust for go-around and applied full back stick pressure resulting in a pitch increase to +9.2 degrees. The engines required time to spool up and the airplane lost altitude before it started to climb. The increase in pitch and delay in thrust caused the tailstrike, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. The airplane was fitted with a tailstrike prevention option which appears on the primary flight director (PFD) when below 400 feet but deactivates when thrust levers are pushed to “TOGA”. Standard operating procedures for go-arounds near the ground inform flight crews to avoid an excessive rotation rate to prevent tailstrikes.
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