Gear-Up Landing From The Inside

Editorial Staff

Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

A gear-up landing incident occurred in January 2007 at Charles W. Baker Airport during a pilot's check ride.
The pilot inadvertently left the landing gear up for the final approach after raising it out of habit following touch-and-go maneuvers, having previously kept it down due to potential ice.
The incident resulted in a bent propeller and scraped belly, a typical outcome for gear-up landings, despite the initial alarm it caused.

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We can’t count the times we’ve been alerted to breathless cable news anchors waiting as a pilot burns off fuel for a mechanically-induced gear-up landing. And while they’re a heart-stopping event for those on board, not to mention the news-starved anchors, they almost always turn out the same way, with a slide along the runway, bent prop(s) and scraped bellies. Well that’s how this one in January of 2007 at Charles W. Baker Airport, near Memphis, turned out too but it’s from a decidedly different perspective.

According to the information accompanying the video, the pilot was undergoing a check ride and a snowstorm was threatening. “Because of possible ice, we had been flying with the gear down the entire time,” the videographer said. “We started doing touch and goes after a while. Habit when you take off is to raise the gear. This is what happened. So, when we come around, they were conversing and what not and simply forgot the gear was up. The prop got bent up pretty bad along with the belly of the plane.”