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.