Marine-1 Landing gear
 

Watched live TV of a flight from White House to ADW yesterday.
Is it normal to leave the gear down for such operations ?

Why not? What goes up must not necessarily come down.

Pretty normal for a short sector like that, I'd say. It's only about 10nm

I’m sure they can afford the 6% in extra fuel consumption 😬.

LZ

It’s pinned.

https://verticalmag.com/features/the...wk-fleet-html/

I would imagine height comes into it and time the gear takes to drop, no point putting it up if it's going to take longer than an emergency descent and landing to come back down.

As twin Huey man points out - it doesn't retract at the moment to save maintenance on the gear.

Plenty of short flights in a lesser aircraft(109) with wheels down. Also think the wheels down question has been discussed on here before?

I was thinking maybe (in the worst case scenario) a gear up landing would be more risk than it is worth for a 15nm
flight super VIP flight.

Pinning the landing gear to save on maintenance on an H3/S61 is perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire career. It was obviously dreamt up by some desk-bound non-aviating MBA! Utterly pathetic.

Interesting comment Cyclic, what would the flying cost per hour be as a matter of interest?
I’m a lowly fixed wing ppl.
T18

Could be due to a lack of spares

if you base the costs at 6000 per hour and the suggested 6 percent upcost in fuel burn your looking at 350 dollars. What's the cost of a main gear strut replacement assume as Crab indicated you can find one

Self-inflicted wound then.

Just speculating:
They could want to use the gear bay for some additional equipment and maybe some fixed gear configuration can be made more energy absorbing for VVIP transportation? They never seem to go long distance so the penalty can't be that bad. And costs or spare parts are no consideration.

Self inflicted only to the extent that you can control the vagaries of a 60 year old supply chain, and the expense and lead time required to qualify a new part or supplier. :ugh:

Cost may not be (probably isn't) a consideration, but spare parts for a 60 year old airframe are likely an issue. And while these may be some of the last H-3s in service, I seriously doubt HMX-1 would allow parts sourced from the boneyard to go anywhere near those aircraft.

Yes, when the Royal Flight in UK were still using the venerable Wessex, any parts had to be either new or ISTR at less than 50% of their life. I can't imagine POTUS would be allowed to fly in anything that wasn't rigorously over-engineered.

and yet they bought the S92......