Embraer Gear Problem Boston. more

[con-pilot]

I realize that I am referring to an entirely different aircraft, however, on the North American Sabreliner aircraft that under certain conditions that you can have a gear down and locked indication with all three gear up and locked.

I know that this has happened to a US Marine Sabre 60 and a Sabre 80 I believe.

There are two clues when this happens. One is the green gear down lights light up immediately when the gear handle is placed to the gear down position. The second of course is the absence of the noise of the gear extending.

Is it possible that the Embraer can have the same type fault?

[robbreid]

Boston Tower during go-around

http://www.mediafire.com/?5njpnbmtudz

[bomarc]

con-pilot

I think your contribution is quite meaningful. I flew sabre 40 (great plane) and understand what you are getting at. your reference to the sound of the gear coming down would be true of any plane of this size , even up to the dc9/737 maybe even bigger.

number 1: we have a very lucky crew and passengers...an inch here or there, a few degrees of bank...and bam.

number 2: if something is wrong with the systems design of this type of plane, fine and it better get fixed pronto.

number 3: if the boys in front were fooling around, screwed up, or whatever you want to call it...I refer you to the continental dc9 in 1996 at houston gear up and stayed on the ground.


If it were not so close to tragedy, I would remind you of the ending scenes of the comedy, "airplane" in which the auto pilot (otto pilot) takes off again after a belly landing.

I couldn't get the tower audio to open up...if someone would post the transcript of the clearance to land and the go around and anything else like>>>WHAT THE @#$%^? that would be neato, not to be confused with NATO or OTAN.

[archae86]

my attempt at a transcript

The tower communications audio link posted by robbreid downloaded to my computer as an mp3 file, which opened normally in Sound Forge 6.0 with good intelligibility (mono, 16 kHz, 16 bit, 1minute 23.7 seconds length).
Here is my attempt at transcribing the audio posted above. Caution, I am not a pilot. I've "typed em as I heard em", without cleaning up--for example what I hear as Ray is surely Runway, and I've left in stumbles and vocal pauses.
I’ve used #### for words I fail to interpret—nothing suppressed as profanity or such.
539: #### Eagle 539 ####
Tower: Eagle 5539 Boston Tower, clear to land on Ray two-two Left. Hold short on Runway two-seven for landing traffic. The wind is two-three-zero at eight.
539: ah clear to land two-two left short at two-seven, 539.
Tower: Flight 539 say intentions.
539: hey I gotta go around, we got to check something out.
Tower: Flight 539 fly uh #### #### turn left heading one-uh-eight-zero, one-eighty on the heading maintain three thousand.
539: one-eighty three thousand, 539.
Tower: flight 539 let me know what your intentions are.
539: alright, we’ll let you know
Another flight A: American Eagle there, they have the sparks coming out.
Tower: Ah you saw that-ah too? Ah, they’re working on that, they’re not sure. They-uh went missed approach. Do you-uh?—do you know where exactly they were coming from? We were trying to get that from a MassPort vehicle.
Another flight A: It looked they were landing on two-two Left and then-uh they touched down, sparks were coming out, and then they must have gone around.
Tower: Kay, you don’t know, you couldn’t tell where the sparks were coming from though?
Another flight A: Underneath the wing area, it looked like there were no gear down.
Tower: Kay, thanks.
Another flight B: and Tower #### four-seven-five
Tower: #### four-seventy-five eh?
Another flight B: Yeah, we saw the whole thing. It was between Fox-Char Char-uh- Foxcart and Charley—and-uh yeah-uh we’ll confirm that. They’re gear was up. They’re-uh nose gear doors were open but there was no gear down at all.
Tower: Okay, thanks. I’ll pass that on.
Another flight C: Not a good day.

[bomarc]

archae86

thanks...wow

another factor was the hold short of 27...this go around could have also ended up centerpunching a plane landing on 27, especially with reduced climb from a "rub and go"


thanks again

[pigboat]

Once watched a HS-125 do a rub and go in Islip NY. The crew was bringing it in for the Garrett engine conversion and forgot to lower the gear. They touched down on the trailing edge of the flaps, continued down the runway for a couple hundred feet while the old Vipers wound up, then zoom, came around and landed normally. Ground off the trailing edges of the flaps, the belly beacon and caused a couple of red faces.

[RobertS975]

OK, this comment is coming from a non-jet private (commercial land and sea) pilot of 30 years... I think these guys were foolish to attempt a go-around after touching the runway with what have been a most unusual and horrible noise. At that point, they could not have known what the status of their bird was, what the damage was. The fact that all came out OK was a bit of luck, no?

Now one can argue that a belly landing might have erupted into a fireball on the runway with probable deaths, and that sure could have happened had they not done the go-around.

My question for the pros: Wouldn't it take giant cojones to push the throttles forward after knowing that your fuselage/flaps or some other pieces of your airplane have scraped on the runway?

[bomarc]

I have a feeling that there were alot of unknowns on this one.

NTSB has cvr and other data recorders...crew screw up? design flaw with aircraft?

I think this one is worth watching

[742]

>>>My question for the pros: Wouldn't it take giant cojones to push the throttles forward after knowing that your fuselage/flaps or some other pieces of your airplane have scraped on the runway?<<<

It has been reported that the crew began the go-around due to float. Turbine engines are bit slow accelerating from idle, so it may well be that the crew began the go-around BEFORE there were any scraping noises.

[bomarc]

I too believe that the go around was initiated without fully realizing the gear was up and that the crew didn't make a rub and go on purpose.

[pax2908]

How easy is it to let the lack of vibration (gear down and locked, +increased aerodynamic noise) associated with the gear extended, go unnoticed? I understand things are happening quickly, but "surely" the absence of this clue will give a feeling of "something not right", even if not part of any checklist?

[barit1]

If the E135's engines are typical turbines, and the crew didn't firewall throttles until they heard a strange scraping noise, they surely wouldn't have made a successful go-around. The crew had to have a clue at 50-100 feet that not all was right with their airplane, and correctly had power coming up so they could reassess the situation.

[Zeffy]

How easy is it to let the lack of vibration (gear down and locked, +increased aerodynamic noise) associated with the gear extended, go unnoticed?

Check the pics -- nose gear doors were open. The associated noise may have provided a "confirmation bias" in addition to the three green that the gear were down.

As bomarc says, this investigation will be worth following.

[bomarc]

in the last two jets I flew, there was a pronounced clunk or thunk as the main gear locked into place.

I still remember that one day when the second of the two thunks was about 1 second too late...

now, I've never even been a pax on an embraer jet and dont know first hand...but I have to think that a thunk (think a thunk?) would be part of the equation.

I do have to point out the DC9 at Houston (CAL) about 11 years ago that landed gear up...alot more crap going on with that one.

[flyhardmo]

This extract is from the myfoxboston comments page.
http://community.myfoxboston.com/blo...ory2?page_no=2
"listen everybody it is rediculous how people speculate so many things before hearing the truth. Just so you guys know the problem was verified on the ground. The aircraft was brought to the hangar and gear swings were done to the aircraft and it was verified that a fault did occur in the legu. The three greens were on and the gears were not down. It is still waiting further investigation but it was not crew error it was a mechanical malfunction and to the aviation expert get a life airplanes now a days are much more advanced then the one u flew in 1950."
Very lucky, but well done to the crew. Love the way he bags news networks 'aviation expert'

[bomarc]

please tell an old pilot what a LEGU is?

I am glad to hear that this is a mechanical problem, however, as I mentioned earlier, there may be a fleet wide problem with design...I hope you post whether it is just a poor job of mx on this plane or is a fleet wide problem

[ATTCS armed]

LGEU

Landing Gear Electronic Unit (as from the Embraer Manual)
Basically it is the 'magic box' that 'processes the main landing gear shock absorber signal'
Looking at the manual, it has four seperate channels and it processes the signals from the WOW and proximity switches on each main gear.
Each switch on the gear is powered from a seperate source to 'enhance redundancy'
Well done the crew BTW!

[Floppy Link]

From the manual

Originally Posted by Embraer

The Landing Gear Electronic Unit (LGEU) processes the main landing gear proximity switches' signals information in four independent channels and controls various equipment operations. Logic processing includes the position signal and its validity.

Don't ask me any more I just copied it out

[bomarc]

fine, just a typo then as the writer indicated LEGU and not LGEU

and for those who don't know, WOW means "weight on wheels". Back in prehistoric times we called them squat switches..

[Capt. Horrendous]

It always did smack of a technical problem, as I said earlier, without a system failure of some sort, there are just too many warnings to enable a crew to make an unintentional gear up landing on this type.

Do American Eagle use flap 22 or flap 45 as the default setting for landing ?.