The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has published its preliminary report into a dramatic emergency landing of a Frontier Airlines Airbus A321 at Las Vegas Harry Reid Airport on October 5 which resulted in flames and smoke shooting out of the main landing gears as it came to a halt on the runway.
Frontier Airlines flight 1326 was in its final minutes of flight from San Diego to Las Vegas, but as an otherwise uneventful flight drew to an end, the flight attendants told the pilots that they could smell a chemical-like odor in the cabin.
A short while later, the pilots could smell the same odor in the cockpit. As the smell became increasingly pungent and acrid, the pilots quickly donned their oxygen masks and began working through an emergency checklist to deal with a possible onboard fire.
As the two pilots began working through the checklist, the First Officer told NTSB investigators that he noticed some of the aircraft systems starting to malfunction or “degrade.”
To make matters worse, the emergency checklist advised the pilots to place the aircraft into the ‘electrical emergency configuration’ because they were still to work out the source of the smell. Doing this took out the display screens, radio and transponder on the First Officer’s side of the flight deck.
“The crew described their workload as high and the environment as increasingly hectic and stressful,” the NTSB’s report says of the incident. “The captain opted to focus on landing the airplane and relied on outside visual references during the approach.”
“During this time, the first officer noted that the captain’s primary flight display (PFD) had ‘limited data represented.’ The captain recalled that they used the speeds placard on the instrument panel when configuring the airplane because the speed symbols on the PFD airspeed indicator were not present.”
After successfully touching down on runway 26L at Las Vegas Airport, witnesses described hearing two loud bangs at tires in the main landing gears exploded.
Smoke and flames started to shoot out of the main landing gear, although the fire extinguished on its own shortly before the aircraft came to a stop on the runway. The airport fire department arrived almost immediately, having been on standby due to the declared emergency, and sprayed the landing gear with foam.
The cause of the smell onboard is yet to be determined, although the onboard computer system recorded that just two minutes before the First Officer declared an emergency, there had been a fault with a fan that cools the avionics compartment.
The NTSB noted in its preliminary report that the emergency checklist used by the pilots includes a provision to restore electrical systems prior to landing to allow for recovery of inoperative systems.
This could have included wheel brake anti-skid, engine reversers, and the nosewheel steering system that could have made the aircraft a lot easier to land without incident.
The investigation continues.
