How to Crash-Land an Airplane

[jtramo]

And a perfect example of a pilot not knowing the systems on his plane. On the Twin Comanche, to do an emergency extension of the gear you open a panel and lift a lever, the gear will free fall and lock, assisted by bungee cords on the main gear. When the lever is lifted, the gear motor is physically disconnected from the gear and the only way to reconnect it is when the plane is on jacks. The video I saw it did not appear that he shut the engines down, I thought I saw blade curls on the LT prop as it stopped.

I’ve seen quite a few gear up landings where the emergency extension system didn’t work, from light twins up to the 777. Unless he was a non licensed kid who’s never flown a plane who stole it for a joyride.....he woulda taken out the manual for the gear extension checklist and run it. That’s there so even someone with a bad systems knowledge can do it.

The first thing an investigator does when they get there is sit in the cockpit, get out the checklist and go through it. They check every handle and switch Position from the emergency checklist to the shutdown checklist.

[Snake45]

And a perfect example of a pilot not knowing the systems on his plane. On the Twin Comanche, to do an emergency extension of the gear you open a panel and lift a lever, the gear will free fall and lock, assisted by bungee cords on the main gear. When the lever is lifted, the gear motor is physically disconnected from the gear and the only way to reconnect it is when the plane is on jacks. The video I saw it did not appear that he shut the engines down, I thought I saw blade curls on the LT prop as it stopped.

I’ve seen quite a few gear up landings where the emergency extension system didn’t work, from light twins up to the 777. Unless he was a non licensed kid who’s never flown a plane who stole it for a joyride.....he woulda taken out the manual for the gear extension checklist and run it. That’s there so even someone with a bad systems knowledge can do it.

Not only that, but he flew around burning off gas for an hour. I'm sure he had people on the ground going through manuals and suggesting ideas of every kind to get the gear down. He was obviously in radio contact the whole time, as they had the fire team and at least one helicopter (I've heard TWO) on hand to film the landing.