A United Airlines Airbus A321neo suffered a frightening landing incident in Orlando after touching down hard and losing a wheel during rollout. While no one was injured, this appears to be a serious failure that will draw close scrutiny.
United A321neo Loses Wheel After Hard Landing In Orlando
A United Airlines Airbus A321neo experienced a hard landing at Orlando International Airport (MCO) that resulted in one of the aircraft’s wheels detaching after touchdown. The incident occurred during landing and rollout (the phase after an aircraft touches down on the runway, when it is decelerating on the ground until it exits the runway or comes to a stop), but the aircraft remained upright and controllable.
There were no reported injuries, but the aircraft bounced hard and sustained damage and was removed from service. JonNYC first flagged the incident, which was captured on video:
The aricraft wast traveling from Chicago O’Hare (ORD) on Sunday, January 18, 2026 as UA2323 (with registration code N14502). Emergency vehicles were dispatched immediately and the aircraft stopped on the active taxiway, causing a temporary groundstop during a busy morning at MCO.
The aircraft touched down firmly, and during the landing sequence one of the wheels separated from the landing gear assembly. Video and photographs from the scene show debris on the runway and emergency vehicles responding, though there was no fire and no evacuation was required.
Hard landings do occur occasionally in commercial aviation, particularly during unstable approaches, gusty winds, or challenging runway conditions. However, landing gear assemblies are built to withstand significant forces, and a wheel detaching is highly abnormal. United has not yet released details on what caused the landing to exceed design tolerances, but the aircraft has been grounded pending inspection. There were strong wind gusts in the area reported at MCO during the time of the landing.
How Serious Is This?
While the outcome was ultimately benign in terms of passenger injury, this is not a minor incident.
Landing gear failures are taken extremely seriously because they occur during one of the most critical phases of flight. Even though the aircraft was already on the ground, the loss of a wheel introduces significant risk, particularly at high speeds.
Modern aircraft are engineered with redundancy, which is why this did not escalate further. That said, a wheel separation suggests either extreme loading, a mechanical defect, or a maintenance issue that will require thorough investigation.
The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to review the incident. It was only in 2024 that United was subject to an extended FAA investigation after a series of questionable incidents raised questions over routine maintenance. That does not appear to be at play here, though it cannot fully be ruled out yet. The FAA investigation found no “significant” safety issues.
The Airbus A321neo is a widely used and generally reliable aircraft type across multiple global carriers, including United. There is no indication at this time that this incident reflects a broader fleet issue.
CONCLUSION
This was a dramatic and unsettling incident, even if it ended without injuries. A hard landing severe enough to detach a wheel is not routine, and it will be closely examined by United, Airbus, and regulators.
The good news is that the aircraft remained controllable, passengers were unharmed, and the systems did what they were designed to do when things went wrong. Still, this is the kind of incident that rightly raises questions and deserves a clear explanation once the investigation is complete. It isn’t clear how long the aircraft will be out of service, but it remains parked in Orlando today.
first, Jon didn’t film the incident. It was filmed by other people. It is beyond objectionable for people to repost other people’s content – but that is how Jon has operated for years.
Second, that is a porpoised landing (front to back oscillation which ends up landing on the nose year) with heavy crosswind corrections. The best course of action is to go around but by the time the porpoising has fully developed, the damage has been done.
I’m not sure this is a systemic problem at UA but just bad technique by this pilot. All of the operational problems that resulted in an FAA review of UA’s procedures were different which is why it is pretty hard to find a single cause.
It will come out in time but the biggest clue will be who was landing that 321NEO and how much time they had in the jet. UA is still a fairly new operator of the 321NEO which means some pilots are pretty green on them.
How did whoever filmed this know to film it? Looked like from a cockpit of another aircraft waiting to depart. Reminds me of the footage of DL4819. Like, how do these folks know to be filming? If they are pilots, aren’t there other things they should be doing than whipping out cellphones and filming other aircraft?!
Poorly trained foreign pilot error or at least that would be the Boeing reasoning for this sort of failure.
Who said it was a foreign pilot?
Do Untied employ pilots qualified to EEA standards?
I thought not.
Tim Dunn, re: “porpoised landing (front to back oscillation which ends up landing on the nose year) with heavy crosswind corrections. The best course of action is to go around…” Please specify your experience and qualifications for offering this (likely inaccurate) opinion.
I’m a (retired) Navy Flight Surgeon, Naval Aviation Safety Officer School graduate, investigated a dozen Naval Aviation Mishaps (accidents, crashes) and an 1800 hour private pilot and I’d never “Monday morning quarterback” any aviation mishap, even for an aircraft in which I have well over 1500 PIC (pilot in commend) hours, based on ONE 22 second video. It’s beyond objectionable for anyone to do so and furthermore to do so INACCURATELY.
Matthew writings are spot on with the exception of “landing to exceed design tolerances”, it’s unknown based on the 1 video if that’s accurate. Perhaps Matthew has access to other information which he didn’t write. If there was “a mechanical defect, or a maintenance issue” a landing well within design tolerances could easily have caused wheel separation or other landing gear failure.
“Thorough investigation” of this mishap will involve MUCH more than viewing one 22 second video. So many possibilities, so little time: defective (landing gear) parts and/or wheels and tires, metal fatigue, improper maintenance of the hundreds of involved maintenance steps, dozens of different specific pilot errors, etc.
BTW, in a Cessna 172, once on the deck for more than a second or 2, there are few situations in which “go around” is the best course of action. “Go around” is the best course of action for a BOUNCED landing (preferably after the first bounce while back in the air) which is different than a porpoised landing. Not sure of proper procedures and techniques for an A321neo.
I’m hesitant to offer opinions based on this one video, it’s like making a diagnosis based on the results of only 1 physical finding or lab test. But to counter obvious misinformation, it doesn’t appear at all to be a “hard landing”. Appears to be an acceptable landing with a severe crosswind (gust) which lifted the left wing.
“If you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing. If you use the airplane again the next day, it’s an outstanding landing. If you can use the airplane again after a little TLC and maintenance it’s still okay.”
of course, there will be investigations as there should be.
that is a porpoised landing coming out of a crosswind correction. and I have enough training and experience to be able to call it what it is.
The mere presence of video from several angles makes it pretty clear what actually happened. You can criticize those that come to conclusions before the NTSB does but that is the nature of social media and, while there are lots of things that aren’t accurately said, there is plenty that is accurate.
of course the NTSB will look at structural issues but Matthew is also very likely right that it was pilot error and not material issues. There are thousands of A321s, even A321NEOs, flying. There simply have not been reports of structural issues with the landing gear.
Sometimes you have to accept that other people can call a spade a spade but that doesn’t change the fact that the feds will do their investigation and I will happily say I am wrong if I am.
I’ve got thousands of hours in the 320 series including a lot of time in the 321 NEO. I have some thoughts on what may have gone wrong that I will post in the very near future but it’s not a porpoised landing and a go around wasn’t the answer. By the time the crew could have reacted to what happened and initiated a go around the nose gear had already departed the airplane. In my view they made the right call not going around from this one.
the right call doesn’t end up w/ a damaged aircraft, so, no the crew didn’t make the right call or at least didn’t execute it correctly
there was a screw up. Someone owns it. Feel free to let us know who that should be other than the PF.
You didn’t read what I wrote. I said not initiating a go around after the nose gear hit was the right call and I stand by that. Nothing good comes from taking that damaged nose gear back into the air. Once the mains hit a go around ceases to be an option the way things develop.
As to what the crew should have done we will have to wait until we have the results of the investigation and have more to go on than one video clip. Yes it certainly looks like pilot error but we don’t know that.
A mechanical issue, a pilot error or both? It’s a thought-provoking incident in any case!
Yet another narrow escape in the long and eventful history of commercial aviation…
So to be clear I don’t know based on this short segment of video what went wrong. We don’t have enough data.
That being said given my years of flying the 320 family including the NEO I have a suspicion. Airbus would like people to believe that all the versions of the 320 family fly identically. And while they are similar there are some critical differences between some of the variants especially around how they handle and the fly by wire logic on landing.
The 320 CEO will allow you to quite happily pull the power to idle at the 50’ Radar Altimeter call. The 321 CEO is similar. The fly by wire (FBW) on the CEO also introduces a nose down input while in the flare requiring gentle back pressure to flare the aircraft. This is done to mimic the behavior of a conventional non FBW aircraft that as you flared would require a gentle increase in back pressure on the stick to maintain attitude as the aircraft slowed.
The NEO however is subtly different. First the FBW does not give you the nose down input ai mentioned above. In practice the flare behavior is pretty similar but there are differences. Much more importantly in the NEO you cannot pull the power to idle at 50’ as might be your normal practice on a CEO. Those big fans generate a lot more drag and pulling power early will result in the aircraft running out of energy in the flare sooner than you expect and it will quit flying on you rather suddenly and unexpectedly.
If you’re a pilot who normally flys the CEO and doesn’t have much NEO time it’s a trap just waiting to bite you. And while I don’t know if that’s what happened here as an experienced Airbus driver it strikes me as a strong possibility.
Unfortunately if you pull the power too early on a NEO there is little you can do to fix it. By time you recognize what is stating to happen it’s too late to add power and correct. You’re going to have a hard landing and the airplane (as we see here) isn’t going to bounce. A go around as was suggested in a thread above isn’t going to happen until your firmly on the ground which at that point doesn’t do you any good.
I’ll wager that FAA scrutiny is not so much “likely”, but “dead certain”.