New video has emerged of the WestJet 737 abrupt arrival that we reported Sunday at Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten, and the aircraft may have been written off. The video shows a view from inside the plane with the jolt that appears to have knocked the phone out of the hand of whoever is shooting it. There are also images of the structure of the right main gear coming through the top of the wing. It looks like the plane slid on the nacelle for the rollout after landing. It took about 24 hours to move the plane off the runway. None of the 169 people aboard were hurt, but three were taken to a local hospital for evaluation.
Canada’s Transportation Safety Board has sent a team to Sint Maarten to investigate the incident, which happened in the early afternoon on Sunday. The flight originated in Toronto and ended with everyone evacuating on the slides. That plane was supposed to take holidayers back to Toronto, but the earliest they can be booked on a direct flight is Wednesday and the only alternatives available include multiple stops and a total travel time of about 30 hours.
An earlier version of this story described the incident as a “hard landing” but subsequent investigation revealed it was within normal parameters and a broken trunnion pin was to blame.
This wasn’t a 737 MAX, just a regular 737-800
Very lucky no fire ensued. Firm arrival indeed.
Hard landing? Looked to me like a stable approach, on speed with an average to firm touchdown within the normal touchdown zone. This looks like a gear collapse of some sort. To me, the crew did a great job of keeping it on the runway after the right MG went through the wing dragging the engine, too.
I meant to say a gear collapse due to some sort of mechanical failure.
Possible prior damage from previous hard landings could be a factor. A good landing is one…
From the video, which of course is by no means conclusive, I agree with Jim. It didn’t look like anything excessive. We’ve all seen the videos of much worse that survived. Not good, but just not that bad. Back when Value Jet was still around, they made a nice landing on 31 at BNA. As he touched, the right main gear and wheel assembly broke off and went careening down the runway. Turns out that although the old MD80’s gear look shiny and nice from the exterior, looking inside of the broken strut, there was massive corrosion and the strut walls were just paper thin in spots. Wouldn’t expect a more recent 737 to be like that, but maybe something else. And thinking about it, not long befor that TWA landed one of their old DC9s on 2l at BNA. And as it touched, its left main just broke off and it slid to a stop on the wing. The pilot in his report said a “devil wind” caused a hard landing. I always used that for all my bad landing from then on.