Ever wonder what happens without the landing gear?

[giza]

This video isn't too exciting, but it is interesting to watch:

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[mwalimu.livejournal.com]

That was comparable to the case about two years ago where a plane had a nosewheel that was stuck sideways.

[wildw0lf.livejournal.com]

Aww, and I was getting all geared up to watch this...

[kellic.livejournal.com]

What no one wanted to try and pull the gear down from a truck driving underneath the plane?
Seriously though we had an incident like that here in MN a year or two ago. it what a MUCH smaller plane. But they were able to pull down the gear and lock it into place. Pretty amazing stuff actually. Took balls of solid steel to do that on that back of a truck though.

[unkbar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was an interesting crash. They had tried to land at another airport with poor visibility. On final approach, their autopilot glitched (who knew?) and they ended up setting down hard with the right main gear off the runway in the grass. The right main snapped off, they goosed the engines and got it back into the air!

Better than crashing, but hey, there you are in the air with one of your main gear missing. You've got to come down sometime.

So, they flew to Birmingham airport where the weather was better. They declared an emergency and landed as best they could. That's why they had such a good video of it, everybody knew they were coming and knew what was going to happen.

See the report at http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20060615-0

[miami-pony.livejournal.com]

Many years ago the premier of New Brunswick was in a plane that had faulty landing gear. They circled the airport for about an hour until they finally decided to make a belly-landing. It scared the crap out of a bunch of people, and the CBC news cameraman who happened to be at the airport got really good shots of the plane landing with the sparks and everything - even won an award for it.

[scs-11.livejournal.com]

One doesn't normally compliment the driving skills of a pilot, but for this guy I'd make an exception. He did a hellacious job of keeping that plane centered on the runway in spite of the lack of a wheel.

[streakthetiger.livejournal.com]

Whoa...that IS interesting. Thanks! :)

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Did they ruin a perfectly good runway?

[foxcutter.livejournal.com]

There is the old saying about any landing you can walk away from, but this is more then that. It says a lot of things about the skill of the pilot to recover from the first error, then to land it like that, and keep it from spinning off into the grass.

It also says a lot about the construction of the plane as it landed in one piece. Heck, it will probably go back into service. They are designed to handle landings like that. Others including a full belly landing, landing without the nose gear, or taking off so hard that the tail literally drags on the ground.

This is one of those combination of man and machine where if either one had been less it could have been a disaster. It's a beautiful thing that goes to just how safe air travel is.