On Tuesday evening, Frontier Airlines Flight 3506 from Orlando was coming in to land in San Juan when the Airbus A321neo touched down hard on runway 10. Passengers described it as “shocking” and “horrible.”
The crew then executed a go-around, heading back into the air to reassess the aircraft’s status. During the climb-out, a continuous stream of flames emitted from the aircraft’s left engine. However despite initial reports and panic among passengers, there was no fire actually aboard the aircraft.
The airport closed both its primary runways, warning inbound aircraft about debris on the runways. Several incoming flights were put into holding patterns, with two flights diverted back to Fort Lauderdale and three to diverted to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.
Flight crew of Frontier 3506 worked through landing-gear safety checklists. Then 27 minutes after the first landing attempt, the aircraft executed a low-altitude approach to runway 8 for inspection. About 40 minutes after the initial hard touchdown, the flight landed safely there, stopped on a parallel taxiway for inspection, and took the plane’s 228 passengers and crew off the runway area.
Here’s video of the evacuation:
And here’s the landing gear as well as video of the left engine from inside the aircraft:
Sent to me by a friend.
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“Slammed the plane on the runway broke the nose tire off ingested it while doing the go. around, full engine fire to failure. Held, did a single engine approach to a go around and then landed the third time.” https://t.co/rtXa686ckr pic.twitter.com/bDbACApCXK— Combat Learjet (@Combat_learjet) April 16, 2025
The Federal Aviation Administration categorized the event as a hard landing incident resulting in damage to the aircraft’s landing gear.
Buy-One-Get-One: Blow a tire, destroy an engine.
Missed the flare on landing, sounds like the the nose gear made contact before the main gear. It will be an interesting NTSB report.
Glad everyone is safe.
After reading this report about the hard landing of Frontier Airlines Flight 3506 in San Juan, I immediately thought about the report of the fatal Asiana Flight 214 crash as reported by the Bay Area news station KTVU. This TV station shamefully reported in error, without further fact-checking, that the names of the pilots of Asiana’s disastrous Flight 214 were “Sum Ting Wong,” “Wi Tu Lo,” “Ho Lee Fuk,” and “Bang Ding Ow.”
https://www.youtube.com/watcshameh?v=CaOkTKfxu44
Wooooo
more unqualified, low time pilots
Why did the crew execute a go around after the hard landing? It seems to me with potential damage to the aircraft after the hard landing the last thing you want to do is risk having to execute a second landing with a damaged plane.
This link should work for the video:
After reading this report about the hard landing of Frontier Airlines Flight 3506 in San Juan, I immediately thought about the report of the fatal Asiana Flight 214 crash as reported by the Bay Area news station KTVU. This TV station shamefully reported in error, without further fact-checking, that the names of the pilots of Asiana’s disastrous Flight 214 were “Sum Ting Wong,” “Wi Tu Lo,” “Ho Lee Fuk,” and “Bang Ding Ow.”
@Ken A — Excellent reference! Bah! That fake-news, following Asiana 214, along with the separate incident of Dr. Dao getting K.O.’d on UA3411, are cult classics within the aviation geek community, for how absurd and somewhat funny they were, even though also, yes, obviously, inappropriate and tragic.
@David P.
A hard landing where you bounce requires a go around. Especially if it is a “porpoise” where you land on the nose gear first. If you try to save a “porpoise” it will only get worse and you will probably get a tail strike or worse. This one was particularly bad. I’m not sure what the pilot was thinking but I’ve never seen a porpoise in an airliner.
21,000 hrs TT
12,000 hrs A320
@Ustafly — “I don’t think that’s a porpoise…” (Walter Mitty reference) @L737?
@1990 — Thaaats a shark
@L737 — “It’s not a pour-pose!!” Great film.