Official Aviation Thread...

[mtechnik]

Luckily no injuries or worse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV2oSpVyAEg

Story

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/01/world/europe/poland-plane/index.html?hpt=ieu_c2

[Maluco]

saw that this morning, I don't think he could have put it down better than that! Congrats to pilot and the rest of the crew. Truly happy everything went well, considering no landing gear.

[hoveringuy]

I need to see about 767 landing gear.. on the DC-9 the landing gear rests on the door, the door is the only thing keeping it from free falling. I could lower the gear with no hydraulics, no electrics, nothing but my gear handle.

On the helicopter the gear was welded down, so no concern.

The King Air used a sewing machine motor. Kinda dicey!

It was a nice landing, wonder when the plane will fly again?

[bimmerboy08]

I also wonder if that plane will fly again. If you want to see some sweet comments on the merits of landing gear up on a runway versus ditching, head over to jalopnik and see the comments section of the article on that video. http://jalopnik.com/5855267/watch-a-...o-landing-gear

[gkurey]

This is why we practice emergencies every flight!

[magicswan20]

this is a very cool thread. i work on planes on a daily basis. about an hour ago i was inspecting the wing on a f15. ive worked on pretty much everything from a helicopter to a f22 to a c130. my uncle was apart of the blue angels so ive been to plenty of air shows as a kid. im hoping to have my pilots license before i leave the military.

[j0oftheworld]

So what would be the protocol for this type of landing?
Other landing options?
Dump fuel just prior to touching down?
How do you fly in to this maneuver?

Flying is SO interesting to me!

[Maluco]

I need to see about 767 landing gear.. on the DC-9 the landing gear rests on the door, the door is the only thing keeping it from free falling. I could lower the gear with no hydraulics, no electrics, nothing but my gear handle.

On the helicopter the gear was welded down, so no concern.

The King Air used a sewing machine motor. Kinda dicey!

It was a nice landing, wonder when the plane will fly again?

if I was flying on a DC9 and all that happened was problems with the landing gear, I would thank God!

That plane has taken over 2,000 lives. That's more than the infamous DC10

[hoveringuy]

if I was flying on a DC9 and all that happened was problems with the landing gear, I would thank God!

That plane has taken over 2,000 lives. That's more than the infamous DC10

The DC-9 is actually very safe and reliable. It will fly just fine with no electrical power or hydraulics whatsoever. It can glide down from 37,000 with no engines, no hydraulics, no power of any kind and land with the gear down!

It's an original "fly by wire" airplane.

It has had a lot of mishaps.. http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/dc9.htm

... 99% of them are pilot error. Some initiated as a mechanical failure (engine failure) but crashed because of pilot error. Most are due to weather or flying into things, either other airplanes are terrain.

Most were in the 1970's, before TCAS and GPS and ILS, before good weather forecasts and ATC. The thought of flying anything during the 1970's scares me now!

[FLYNAVY]

So what would be the protocol for this type of landing?
Other landing options?
Dump fuel just prior to touching down?
How do you fly in to this maneuver?

Flying is SO interesting to me!

I've never landed an airplane gear up, but generally speaking, yeah you would want to be as light as possible (helps both with lowering your approach speed, as well as limiting the fuel available to burn if it doesn't go well), and make a nice flared minimum sink rate landing. Obviously touching down on centerline with as much runway in front of you as possible would be ideal as well. In my world, with 99% of gear related malfunctions, we just drop the tailhook and take a field trap. Not really an option for airline type aircraft, so I'm not sure what they train to. My guess is that this is not a real common scenario, and I too wonder why they weren't able to emergency extend them. My only guess is that they had trouble getting one of them down, and elected to bring them all up instead for better landing characteristics......in some airplanes, it is better to land with all of them up than 1 or two missing.

[gkurey]

I suppose it all depends on the plane and what systems they have. I'm sorta surprised too that there isn't some way to emergency extend the gear for them. I'm sure they took the best course given their specific scenario, I definitely don't know enough to make the call...I'm still a sky-noob.

[FLYNAVY]

I suppose it all depends on the plane and what systems they have. I'm sorta surprised too that there isn't some way to emergency extend the gear for them. I'm sure they took the best course given their specific scenario, I definitely don't know enough to make the call...I'm still a sky-noob.

Yeah, and like any in-flight-emergency, the end result is what ultimately matters. You could F away all the procedures and if you get it safely on deck, not a whole lot of questions will be waiting for you. That said, it seems like they did a good job with this one

[tg318is]

Yep... "'I'm with the band".

We picked them in at Heathrow and took them to Bahrain. A bunch of the pictures on their last album were taken at our fuel stop in Greece. Tom sat up front with me for about an hour, talked about how bad he wanted to do a gig at Area 51.

That's pretty damn sweet!

[mtechnik]

Somewhat off topic but...

[thearkitekt]

mechanic: "i've never seen a wing bent from the BACK before..."