According to the pilot, he was approaching Benson Municipal Airport in Arizona when a departing helicopter reported deer near the runway.
He told investigators he “turned on the landing lights, dropped the gear and started my approach to Runway 10.”
He did not see any deer activity and proceeded to land.
Upon landing, the Piper PA-24-400 began to shake and then stopped with its belly on the runway and the main landing gear partially extended. The nose gear was not visible due to the airplane’s resting position on the runway.
According to personnel who recovered the airplane, the landing gear switch was in the down position at recovery. When the airplane was lifted off the runway, the landing gear remained in a partially extended position and did not operate when power was applied to the airplane and the landing gear switch was manipulated. The landing gear was subsequently lowered and locked into position when the emergency gear system was used.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the skins, frames, and stringers on the belly of the fuselage.
During a post-accident examination, the airplane was placed on jack stands for an operational check of the landing gear system. The landing gear motor circuit breaker was found popped. The circuit breaker was reset, and the landing gear was subsequently cycled multiple times, with the landing gear being raised and lowered using the airplane’s electrical power and the landing gear switch. The gear position indicator lights operated normally when the gear changed positions.
No damage was noted to the main landing gear wheels or gear doors or the nosewheel.
Abrasion damage was noted to the face of both nose gear doors, consistent with the doors being closed during landing.
The landing gear was extended to about the position that was observed during recovery. Both the nosewheel and nose gear doors extended about 5 inches below the fuselage.
Probable Cause: The pilot’s failure to lower the landing gear on approach due to distraction.
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This April 2022 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
Thankfully, this isn’t a problem with Bush float planes here in Southeast Alaska. The closest we get to this situation would be wheels up in an amphibious aircraft landing in a landing strip, or accidentally having wheels extended on the water. The last of which, of course, is far worse.
“There are those who have and those who will.” Not entirely true, but it happens frequently enough. GUMPS x 3 (downwind, base, final) is what I do, whether with retractables or fixed gear. But even that isn’t a guarantee. Fortunately very few gear up landings result in serious injuries, except to the ego.
Having flown Bonanzas for years, my practice has been to lower the gear and confirm the gear is down just before entering the 45 to downwind approach or on base entry approach or on an extended final approach. This gets that chore out of the way before most distractions and additional workload begins to evolve. Then confirm the gear is down again with gear down lights and or listening for that annoying gear up horn during stabilized final.
You Monday quarterback s crack me up.
Care to point out any deficient or improbable comments in the quarterbacking?
Mac—couldn’t you have used a better choice of words other than “crack me up” in consideration of the subject matter? Hee! Hee! Blue skies my friend.
As I mentioned to another a few days ago; reviewing these crashes and understanding what the pilot did or didn’t do is important for the rest of us , so we might avoid the same situation or failure to take action.
None of us will live long enough to make all the possible pilot errors , and survive them.
The NTSB and FAA reports are factual and usually don’t fully explain what happened.
They ‘pick from a list’ of errors/ faults, but never do an in-depth analysis.
That why it’s important for the rest of us pilots to try to understand what happened and how we might not make the same mistakes.!!
So, no nitpicking/ ‘Monday quatrerbacking’, just wanting to survive a similar situation.
The gear warning horn should have sounded with the reduction in power with the gear up.
If so equipped, the warning for unsafe gear should have been lit.
This Piper was built before the auto-extend feature, so having locked it out is not a factor.
I think from reading the reports and looking at the pictures, this pilot lost situational awareness, and failed, on short final, to verify 3 green lights, and so failed to TOGA as he approached the threshold. “Verifying” that the gear handle was down, it was too late to extend and lock before contact with the runway.
From the complex Piper’s I’ve flown, gear extention is 5-8 seconds, and if this pilot was in the groove hitting his target numbers, gear down at threshold, the gear probably did not have time to fully extend. Reading prior comments, yeah, it is probable that he put the gear handle in the down position, just before contact with the runway making this, effectively a gear up landing.
Not much to say. I’ll presume the breaker popped because he put the switch in the down portion after the fact.
Yup..! The NTSB testing of the gear indicate that the pilot selected ‘gear down’ after the nose hit the runway, but the mains partly extended before the overload tripped the gear motor breaker….. [ a high time pilot trying to cover his butt after forgetting to put the gear down before he hit the runway ]…