CRYING AND PRAYING

Frontier Airlines’ Front Wheel Rips Off During ‘Very Bad’ Hard Landing

Terrified passengers feared it was “the end” as the plane climbed back up, circled, and made a second attempt at landing.

Passengers aboard a Frontier Airlines flight to Puerto Rico feared their time on Earth was coming to an end when the plane made a hard landing that ripped off one of the front landing gear’s wheels. The Airbus 321, arriving from Orlando with 228 people aboard, quickly aborted the landing attempt and climbed back up. Passengers could see an orange glow under the plane and smoke rushing past the window where the landing gear had caught fire. “For a few minutes I thought it was the end of our story here on earth,” one of the passengers wrote on Facebook. In a video she posted, children could be heard crying and other passengers praying. The two-year-old plane circled San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport four more times, then made a second attempt to land on a different runway. It abandoned that landing 500 feet from the runway and did another circle before finally landing about an hour after its scheduled arrival. No injuries were reported, and investigators applauded the flight crew for getting everyone home safely. Local media reported the plane had suffered a “mechanical problem” that caused the wheel to come off during the hard landing. The FAA is now investigating.