Crew smelled ‘chemical’ odor before fiery plane landing at Las Vegas airport, report says

A preliminary report released Monday about a fiery Frontier Airlines plane landing at Harry Reid International Airport earlier this month said the flight crew reported a “chemical smell that was difficult to identify” before touching down.

The report from the National Transportation Safety Board states that while the flight was cruising on Oct. 5, the cabin crew smelled the odor but could not determine where it was coming from.

The captain and first officer also detected the smell in the cockpit, which they first described as “chemical and acrid in nature, or mildew-like.”

As the flight continued, the smell became “increasingly pungent, and evolved to smell like ‘burning rubber and/or petroleum products, such as plastics,’ ” the report states.

The flight crew reported, while conducting an emergency checklist, that there was no visible smoke in the cockpit or cabin but that the odor would not dissipate.

As the crew worked through the checklist, other “aircraft systems began to degrade,” according to the report, which included the autopilot and auto throttles becoming unavailable. However, the first officer said that he did not know if the technical issues were the “result of damage to equipment from a possible fire, or a result of systems isolations [specified] in the checklist[s].”

Around 2:51 p.m., the first officer of the flight declared an emergency and requested a descent at Harry Reid.

Frontier Airlines did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

‘Increasingly hectic and stressful’ environment

The report states that, as the captain and first officer worked to control the aircraft as the flight data recorder lost power and the crew experienced difficulty communicating to air traffic control, the crew described their workload as “high and the environment as increasingly hectic and stressful.”

With the plane’s navigation technology impaired, the captain resorted to using “outside visual references” during the approach to Harry Reid with “limited data represented” on his flight display, the first officer said in the report.

The plane touched down on a runway at 3:10 p.m. with its automatic brakes nonfunctional.

A witness of the emergency landing said in the report that they heard “two loud bangs in quick succession as the tires exploded about 3 seconds after touchdown. Then there was a large screen of smoke behind them and fire around the tires.”

Witnesses said the flames appeared to extinguish shortly before the plane stopped and before airport firefighters dispensed a fire extinguishing agent around the landing gear and engines.

Data messages recovered after the rough landing revealed that at 2:49 p.m. a fault was detected in a fan unit that cools the avionics compartment, which houses the plane’s electronic components.

Passengers join lawsuit

A new lawsuit filed on behalf of passengers on board the plane states that the plane “violently crash landed” on the runway and that passengers “were stranded inside the sweltering smoke-filled aircraft for nearly an hour.”

The report said passengers deplaned via stairs brought to the airplane after fire crews said the fire was fully extinguished.

The lawsuit alleges that several passengers on board the flight experienced “emotional distress, pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of household services, lost wages, lost earning capacity, medical expenses, and future medical expenses,” following the emergency landing.

The landing is still under investigation, the report states.

Contact Taylor Lane at tlane@reviewjournal.com. Review-Journal reporter Noble Brigham contributed to this story.