Ascend Charlie wrote about a 747/H500 pilot he knew:
But as i flew more and more hours with him, the expected admiration turned to dismay and then horror, thinking of how dangerous he must have been in his own machine (thankfully in a different country). Perhaps with the passing years, some of his functions had deteriorated to some extent - and this was confirmed by him landing a 747 wheels-up. Takes some leadership to do that.
Well, it's not that simple, is it? It never is. I mean, it's not like the 747 captain was flying alone and simply forgot to put his wheels down, as happens at least a couple of times per week here in the U.S. There's more to it than that.
In "most" aeroplanes with retractable gear, the green "Gear Down" lights are arranged in a little triangle which gives the pilot a clear visual indicator that all three legs are extended. In the 747 this is not the case. The only thing the two forward-facing pilots see is one single "Gear Down" light. They refer to the Flight Engineer for "the rest of the story." He's the systems expert. Or, he's supposed to be.
The Captain knew that there were certain conditions in which the gear indicators could conflict with the actual gear position. Thus, he addressed the FO and asked for confirmation that the gear was indeed down.
On the FO's panel, there are five "Gear Down" lights. But they are arranged ambiguously. Four are set together in a horizontal row, and the fifth is separate- above and left of centerline. With that separate light dark, it might not be very obvious that it was supposed to be included with the four just below it. Of course, a sharp FO who was familiar with his a/c and systems would know this, but the accident aircraft was not so equipped.
In fact, all indications are that the FO erroneously turned the #1 Hydraulic system "OFF" when they shut the #1 engine down, although he certainly doesn't admit to that and neither would I. The PIC and the SO did expect that the gear and flaps would operate more slowly. But they did not expect, nor should they have, that those items would take up to
ten times longer to operate than normal. So as they commenced the approach, the gear and flaps were still in transit. Then, as they tried to select Flaps25, they got the gear horn.
When the Captain asked if the gear was down, the FO gave a conflicting reply. On one hand, he said "Yep," but then he added, "I've got four green." He did not say, "I've
only got four green," which would've or should've raised a red flag. Obviously, he did not understand the significance of what he was seeing.
Now...stop a minute. You're sliding down on final approach in a huge piece of flying machinery. You've had an inflight-emergency, but you've got it handled. So far, so good. You can see the runway ahead of you. The "landing expectation" is high. Then, at sort of the last minute, you get an indication (in this case the
gear horn!) that something is amiss. In retrospect, we wonder why the Captain didn't cry out, "
Great kookamooka! Balls to the walls, boys, let's get outta here! Go around!!" But he didn't. You know, you can blame "differences in airline policies" all you want (as all three pilots did). But the fact remains that you just don't LAND with the gear horn blowing.
But the whole crew was probably preoccupied with and depressed about the thought of grabbing yet another 747 and completing the trip in a day that would stretch beyond the normal duty-time limits. I know that would p*ss me off.
I was amused by one thing the Captain said about his mindset during the approach (i.e.
before the embarassing nose-slide).
When he selected flaps 30, the pilot in command had resolved that further pursuit of the cause of the warning horn was counterproductive, as he needed to monitor the aircraft manipulation by the co-pilot during the imminent landing. The pilot in command had decided that both the resolution of the warning horn problem and the approach were sloppy and that he would conduct an in-depth debrief for the flight-deck crew at an appropriate time after landing.
This is funny. It's not a stretch to imagine a pilot in a similar situation thinking the same thing:
"I'm really gonna give it to these guys after we land" ...just before slamming into a mountain or something.
There are lessons aplenty we can learn from the Ansett accident. Yes, the Captain was deficient. But a 747 is not a single-pilot aircraft, and he was saddled with a very weak crew (in the case of the FO, borderline incompetent). So it's not
exactly the same thing as going out and forgetting to put the wheels down before landing, which is what was implied in AC's initial two posts.
You know, we helicopter pilots are lucky in a perverse sort of way. Those of us who fly in single-pilot ops are SOLELY responsible for our pilot-error accidents. For better or for worse, it's all us. If we slam our BK into the trees, rip the skids off, break our wrist and have to do an extended-hover back at base while Maintenance tries to figure out how we're going to set the beast down, there's really no one else to blame. Even though I've never flown high-performance planks, for a long time I had that "over inflated view" of myself. But you know, the more accident reports I read, the more I know that it
can happen to me.
With the proper attitude, any experienced pilot can easily learn to fly anything else. I suppose I could even learn to land the Space Shuttle...with one or two sessions of dual, of course.