TK crew did not /forgot to raise the gear ???
 

A friend sent a mail saying that a TK A319 took off in IST for a domestic flight and did not/forget to raise the gear???:confused:

The airplane climbed to FL230 and had to land half way to refuel.
After that they continued to their original destination (uneventfully).

Might have been a sys failure but why would they continue if they just left the main base?

Fishy story? But also published on a Turkish aviation forum.:\

Given that the crew decided to re-fuel halfway to their destination, I very much doubt they forgot to raise the gear. More likely is a technical fault requiring the gear to be left down for the transit flight. This could happen for a number of reasons.

A gear left down will consume about 80% more fuel, therefore, and unlike the Dutch 757, one needs to be very careful about fuel consumption and you must not use the FMS for predicting the fuel burn.

Professional Pilots Rumour Network.
Post suggests that crew 'forgot' to raise the gear. :ugh:
5 Stars for least professional post of the year - and there's only 11 weeks left.

Lowfarefinder
 

Did you mean this German Airbus one:
Hapag-Lloyd Flight 3378 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


or was there a Dutch 757 as welll

That's the one I meant Starbear.

Of course, it would be stating the obvious to say that if they forgot to take the gear pins out....................

It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened.

Gotta be pins...someone's gonna have a big red face somewhere...!

OB:ok:

Forget So the poster referred to is a professional poster here? Where do I sign up, I wanna be a professional poster too?!

May a member of the SLF ask a question here?

Even from my point of view, I'd be very sceptical that the gear could ever be "forgotten" by the crew. From back where I have to sit, it's always extremely obvious when the gear is down because of the extra noise and vibration. I know the flight deck is farther away from the main gear (but not the nose gear) but can you tell me if having the gear down is as obvious up where you sit?

I've been very interested to read the various speculations on why they gear may have stayed down (if the rumour is even true) for operational reasons or external mistakes though.

Bob

U/C pins ?
 

Excuse my ignorance only being an ex RAF engine fitter but do they put undercarriage pins in on civilian aircraft & does it generally apply to all/most aircraft ?? Paul H.

pins...
 

zetec2:

Yes, at our place we do. There is also a rack in the FD where they are stowed so you always have a look at that, and one of the pre-start checklist items is:

gear pins............3 stowed

So you have a couple of opportunities to catch out any errant pins - the first and foremost being the walk-around of course....

DW.

I've heard of it being done on go-arounds where workloads high, and the PNF misses the positive climb call, if you don't get the trigger then it's very easy to miss the item completely.
What with desperately trying not to overspeed flaps, monitoring speed/rate of climb/missed app procedure/radio's etc your brain might not register the extra noise I guess.

That being said to reach FL230 and not notice?! I know on my type you certainly wouldn't get the acceleration you'd be expecting, even in the initial climb, with the gear down so you'd start looking around for the cause..

Zetec2 from my experience most civi commercial aircraft have pins fitted but they're normally only put in place when the aircrafts in the hanger or being towed.

I had two similar occasions on 320/family


- hot break warning after gear retraction
- LGCIU fault

very simple, keep cool:)

They stopped to refuel then completed the journey uneventfully. Was gear retracted on second leg? Just asking...

I've done gear down ferries, although I don't think they're approved (in UK) with passengers aboard. As for having the pins in, that's a no-no. What happens if an engine fails? Better to raise the gear and maybe not be able to lower it again than crash off the end of the runway because of lack of climb performance.

Never forget one of our 321's getting off the ground with water in the 'weight on wheel' sensors. Not only would the gear not retract, but the computers went bonkers (as one would imagine given the machine thought it was on terra firma).
Being the nosey git that I am, I had a nose on the FD......the ECAM was full of red....:eek:

Speaking to the pilots, they both said how surprised they were when they selected gear up and the computers had one heck of a 'moment'!!

:p

ref post #13

LGCIU fault

s... happens

Herod

What about the 146 that (allegedly) got airborne from LGW with a flightdeck full of management/training pilots and found they couldn't get the gear up because the pins were still in?

Rumour had it that one bright spark wanted to continue to Innsbruck before wiser heads prevailed!

U/C pins
 

dwshimoda

Thanks for the info re u/c pins, never to old to learn something new, PH.

Would that have been the fleet manager and a line trainer over riding the chief pilot? ;)

When you have not put the gear up until 264 kts you have to leave it out until you slow down again below 260 kts.

I believe that the max gear retraction speed on the 320 series is 220 kts. Actually this has happened at the airline I fly as contract pilot. A local crew forgot to raise the gear after take off in IST and only caught it on the after T/O checklist above transition altitude. They also forgot to slow down to raise it, causing red faces all around.

220kts is correct, 260 is the speed where the gear hydraulics are pressurised..

Impossible
 

It's just impossible for the crew to simply "forget" the gear down and NOT sense any abnormalities in noise increase and abnormal flight behaviour. Unless of course they were both stoned on something????

No, 220 is not correct. At 264 kts the hydraulic pressure will be removed from the extension/retraction system.
I could quote the AMM, but you can check the FCOM 1.32.10 P3 :ok:

possibly but it does happen. remember one crew on a MegaDeath-II who were reportedly complaining of the poor rate of climb of the aircraft at 320KIAS, passing 15,000', when they realised they could hardly hear each other also. Finally pulled gear up at same speed, recall the gear doors didn't like that at all. :ok:

Sorry, but 220 is correct.

As I said, 260 is the speed for gear hyd pressurisation.
However, if you look at Fcom 3.1.20 (operational limitations)
So you should slow down to 220kts before retracting the gear.

I agree you could in theory retract below 260 as the system will have pressure though.

I remember many moons ago returning from Spain on a Spantax DC8, may have been a Corronado but I seem to remember DC8 if they had any, the Captain was smoking a pipe I remember.I think he wanted to look like ex RAF. Anyway, the landing gear would not retract.He told us SLF with our buckets and spades and stuffed donkeys that he had decided to continue but we had to re-fuel.It did not seem any different from a normal flight, apart from the re-fueling.

I remember a Transair A300 taking off in MAN with the gear pins in (1997), they dumped 15t of fuel and returned to MAN.

Back to the original post, I spoke to a TK crew and they told me that the crew was on their 3rd leg that day. The gear has been left down to cool the brakes. Wx was bad and they had some sort of serious malfunction which required their immediate attention.

This, of course is all second hand info only (rumour) and I knew comments like the one from 'Forget' would rain down on me. But hey, they really seemed to have forgotten the gear while they where extremly busy sorting out the other problem(s).

Yes, and I know just from where the FD crew came, and it was definitely not from the USA, Euroland, Canada, etc.:{

Now that would be a professional airline. With our mob the gear pins are .... ?? ..... anywhere, and useful items in the checklist????

Can gear pins be forgotten? In a word, yes.

And don't forget rogue pins from the tug driver's pocket with no flags attatched:ugh::ugh:

3 pins on the flight deck doesn't mean you're safe, as a colleague once found out.

- not high fuel consumption and apparent lack of climb performance I hope...................:)

Herod.......

"""I've done gear down ferries, although I don't think they're approved (in UK) with passengers aboard. As for having the pins in, that's a no-no. What happens if an engine fails? Better to raise the gear and maybe not be able to lower it again than crash off the end of the runway because of lack of climb performance."""


I've signed many an aircraft off for a gear down ferry back to main base and we always put the pins in, not only that they are wire locked in and flag removed, that's what the manuals say so where the "no-no" bit comes from i'm not sure.

Thats on 145's 146's and Dash's BTW.

Remember the RAF VC10 that flew Terry Waite from Beirut to Cyprus, or maybe even from Cyprus to UK? It flew with the right gear stuck down.

And don't forget rogue pins from the tug driver's pocket with no flags attatched:ugh::ugh:


That would most likely be the lock out pin for the nosewheel steering...not a major problem, you find out as soon as you wish to turn, unless you put a big size 10 on one of the brakes.
Failing that, the nose gear might swivel a tad upon retraction and remodel the nosegear doors a tad:hmm::hmm:

The no no ...
 

correct me if I am wrong ... but unless a performance group A aircraft can leave the second segment by having the gear stowed, it's no longer a performance A aircraft.. fine with all engines working, then comes the day one stops.. unless there is specific performance data for gear down eng out it doesn't sound quite right to be locking the pins into the gearlegs !!

Contractor, please re-read my post and accept it for what it says.

It wasn't the steering by pass pin. It was the nose gear retract. It was from a tug driver who had moved the aircraft from one place to the departure stand before the flight crew boarded. It didn't have a flag. There were 3 pins on the flight deck. The nose leg would not retract. It was a VERY experienced colleague.

I thought my previous post was succint and unambiguous:ugh:

Absolutely, Nubboy - the wise check the pin holes v e e r r r y y y carefully and do not rely on 'flags'.

Nubboy,

The towcrew should not remove gearpins or install them, that's a techjob.

Only lockout pin should be installed/removed by towcrew. Most airports/airlines operate towcrews who do exactly that.
what would happen if the towcrew took it upon themselves to remove gearpins if the hydraulics are flat?