Gear Up Landings
At present owners of light aircraft with retractable landing gear are charged up to 25% more for hull and liability insurance than those with fixed gear. This suggests the former are 20% more likely to have an accident than the latter, with all such accidents being due to gear up landings!!!
I just do not believe this is true because the FAA or CAA would take action pretty quickly if they felt retractable gear were such a terrible risk. There may be a small additional risk but certainly not enough to justify the big premium hike. The problem is I need some stats to prove my case.
Gear up landings where the pilot is at fault are classified by CICTT as ‘abnormal runway contacts’ (ARC) while gear ups because of mechanical failure are recorded under ‘system component failure – non powerplant’ (SCF-NP). The problem is other types of incident are also recorded under these headings (hard/heavy landings, long/fast landings, off center landings, crabbed landings, nose wheel first touchdown, tail strikes) so I need a more granular breakdown.
To cut a long story short (well shortish!), does anyone know of any stats, studies or market reports which I have been done in to the issue of gear up landings.
Cheers