Frontier Jet Hard Landing Breaks Gear, Puerto Rico, 4/16/25

Kenny Phillips

Kenny Phillips

Final Approach
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Kenny Phillips
The crazy thing is they hit the runway hard enough to break stuff, then went around without really knowing the damage.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Gonna hope that someone can do a visual without those lights.
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If the lights are working but misaligned, you can miss the flare point. This has happened to me at a regional airport when I was flying an Aerostar (twin engine piston).

Tim
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Don't you, um, look at the runway to judge that?
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Yes and no. When you fly into a new airport, you want to use every trick in the book. PAFI lights are one such tool.
In the Aerostar, my speed over of the fence was normally around 130 KIAS if the runway was long enough. (Short field involves approach below Vmc of 119 KIAS). With a 3 degree downslope my vertical speed was a roughly 1000 FPM.
In this case, I was flying into a new to me airport, at a much higher altitude, thinner and shorter runway, with a slight incline. All of these factors gave me a false illusion of my altitude above the runway and my speed. The incorrect PAFI lights had me lower, also reducing my margin.
I managed to flair, but by no means was it my smoothest landing.

Tim
 
tspear said:
If the lights are working but misaligned, you can miss the flare point. This has happened to me at a regional airport when I was flying an Aerostar (twin engine piston).

Tim
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Uhh?

So for the round out

I’d fly the FD down to mins, if I see runway

in smaller jets I would just be visual with the runway for those cues

Big stuff our “hint” would be RA (radar altimeter in the plane) and rest would be visual same as a light jet, J3 or anything else

I also think the angle of the approach lights is set mechanically, I mean having a power flicker or soothing and now having the PAPIs show a 6degree path would be a major design flaw I’d think
 
Roller said:
I also think the angle of the approach lights is set mechanically, I mean having a power flicker or soothing and now having the PAPIs show a 6degree path would be a major design flaw I’d think
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Hmm, I started this tangent... :D
The couple PAFI lights I have seen are mechanically adjusted; and I have seen the adjustment being done once. It looked like a royal pain in the rear :D

In the case of PR, I do not believe the power fluctuations would have affected the alignment. Just if they were on or off. So, I think we should end this tangent as moot and not likely to apply to a jet of the size in question.

Tim
 
Power grid has always been unreliable back home. BLUF: Vestiges of colonialism. Can't go into more on here, like and subscribe to my substack in 24-36 months when I get my 1A rights back. Digressing.

This got ish to do with power grid space aliens (btw, the power was on in Isla Verde at the time dodos). This is occam baby. F9 is a de facto farm team franchise, especially with no post-covid contract pay rates forthcoming for YEARS. So you're gonna get more neophyte boo boos and lack of adult supervision per capita. This isn't particularly novel, FFD carriers do it [airplane bending OJT] all day every day.
 
hindsight2020 said:
like and subscribe to my substack in 24-36 months when I get my 1A rights back. Digressing.
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Absolutely... As long you've got an editor that can translate to the normies.

My first CFI is from there. Have had a few conversations about things.
 
hindsight2020 said:
…. This is occam baby. ….
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I guess the daily reading of the Blue-4 News, SIIs, AIBs, and all the other trappings of AF aviation makes this easier to understand.

The context provided by the detail, frequency and severity (or lack thereof) reported in those things kind of sharpens the senses when it comes to the stupid human tricks involving aviation appliances that can be done.
 
tspear said:
Yes and no. When you fly into a new airport, you want to use every trick in the book. PAFI lights are one such tool.
In the Aerostar, my speed over of the fence was normally around 130 KIAS if the runway was long enough. (Short field involves approach below Vmc of 119 KIAS). With a 3 degree downslope my vertical speed was a roughly 1000 FPM.
In this case, I was flying into a new to me airport, at a much higher altitude, thinner and shorter runway, with a slight incline. All of these factors gave me a false illusion of my altitude above the runway and my speed. The incorrect PAFI lights had me lower, also reducing my margin.
I managed to flair, but by no means was it my smoothest landing.

Tim
Click to expand...
Each of the light housing units of a PAPI is mechanically aimed. If it’s a four box PAPI (L-880), for it to be maladjusted and displaying something sensical, at least two LHUs would have to be completely misaligned, as in set entirely incorrectly (indicating on glidepath at no less than a 2° angle, any more than that is impossible). If one LHU were broken so as to be temporarily misaligned, which is more likely to happen than two, you could feasibly get a weird indication like white white red white. But they have a sensor that shuts the whole system down if any LHU is tilted more than .25° down or .5° up from the setpoint.

What’s less commonly known is that PAPI systems are installed within a fairly wide range of distances from the end of the runway, depending on a lot of factors. This can bring you in to a place different than the expected aimpoint on the runway.
 
tspear said:
Yes and no. When you fly into a new airport, you want to use every trick in the book. PAFI lights are one such tool.
In the Aerostar, my speed over of the fence was normally around 130 KIAS if the runway was long enough. (Short field involves approach below Vmc of 119 KIAS). With a 3 degree downslope my vertical speed was a roughly 1000 FPM.
In this case, I was flying into a new to me airport, at a much higher altitude, thinner and shorter runway, with a slight incline. All of these factors gave me a false illusion of my altitude above the runway and my speed. The incorrect PAFI lights had me lower, also reducing my margin.
I managed to flair, but by no means was it my smoothest landing.

Tim
Click to expand...
Having flown a lot of 3 degree glide slopes in the 130-145 knot range your rate of decent should be right around 700 FPM.
 
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