Boeing 767 Emergency Landing

I wonder what that sounds like from within the cabin. Must sound like you are getting ready to die. That has to be the longest 15 seconds of those passengers lives.

 

The media always makes a big deal out of these gear up landings, but does anybody know of a case where they turned out badly - I.E. a fatal crash?

I have always had the cynical notion that they just made good video footage for any local news station that could get a camera chopper in the air...

 

Man! Cynical is right.......and a bit blasé too....

That landing is getting right up there with Sully IMHO.......that was smooooooth!
There was so much that could have gone sideways in that event........(yes the plane too....)
Of course, he had some time to prepare for it, which others have not had.

I'd fly with him!

Tritone
Oh; pretty good airframe too....

 

Bad day for landings or a really good day I guess, however you want to look at it, in other news the Gulfstream 150 Rick Hendricks (NASCAR Team owner and car dealer) and his wife were in went off the runway in FL, it was Jimmie Johnsons plane.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nascar/story/Hendrick-Motorsports-plane-carrying-NASCAR-owner-Rick-Hendrick-crash-lands-at-Key-West-International-airport-103111

 

Weren't his son and some team members killed in a turboprop a few years back?

 

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how all three landing gear were neutralized. There's got to be a mechanic or a mechanical issue of big proportions to cause this.

 

Unfortunately, yes

 

brill !!!

 

Yes

 

Wasn't a $300 part responsible for the hydraulic rudder failure (all 3 systems?) on the airliner that crashed years ago? It's late or I'd get the NTSB reports out.

767's have redundancy on the gear 4x then gravity????

What an amazing job the pilots did, there was some little old lady on the news that said "I have been through worse landings on planes with wheels." LOL

 

I heard a report that some passengers actually thought the gear was down. That pilot did an amazing job. You would think it would veer off the runway over that distance. I'm sure that was not by accident.

But, it sure makes you wonder how all the gear could fail at once including whatever back up there is for this.

 

At what point was the pilot completely out of control? (Left seat answer is "never" ) Obviously, no nose wheel steering or braking when he touched down, but was there any effective rudder control versus runway friction?

If not, the safe slide was all based on his initial aim and contact point. Good job regardless.

 

I wonder if the airframe would be repairable after something like that, or would it be a total write-off? My gut tells me the latter but on the other hand I suspect that you could fix a lot of things for the cost of a replacement.

 

Absolutly. Two issues here. Why/how could all 3 gear not extend normally, and why didn't the alt extend work so as to allow the gear to free fall?

 

Fine job, greased it, the guy deserves a medal. I wonder what a crosswind would have done.
I'll bet an electronic fault that failed to even send the command to lower gear. If 4X redundancy I cannot fathom a mechanical scenario.
So, is the airframe a write off or destined for the third world?

 

If you like closely at the first picture you will see the tail skid extended. It is powered by the same system as the gear "C" or center system on the 767 but electrically controlled.

Other things powered by C are the flaps.slats which you can see extended.

My guess is there was a failure in the control system which is cable operated. Moving the gear handle moves cables which run back to the selector valves for the main and nose gear selector valves located in the RMLG well.

This still doesn't explain why the alternate extend didn't work which is an electric switch which powers an actuator which moves cables (a different set from the normal ones) which in turn act directly on the gear door up locks.

When the up locks release then the doors open and the gear falls out and locks down.

 

Note that I did not say the pilot did not do a great job - of course he did. What I was saying was that I think the media overplays gear up landings because they are an easy opportunity to film, and that in actuality they are not all that difficult or dangerous.

What Sully did was far different than this - he ditched a plane dead stick in the only possible place that it could survivably be put down. This was not a dead stick landing. Note also that the airport reportedly foamed the runway and presumably they flew around a while to burn off fuel.

I was wondering the same thing - when, BTW, was the last time we have seen a modern commercial jetliner with a total failure of all wheels to extend?

 

I used to inspect the Alternate Gear Extend system on that airplane when they were being built new. It's a very simple "nearly" fool proof system, (for obvious reasons). For it to fail on all three gear positions?

Hard to believe.

 

Is it possible that one gear failed to extend, and the pilots decided that a full belly-landing was safer than trying to land on two gears?

 

There is no way that that airplane is a write off. The two engines probably are but the damage is easily repairable and I will bet that , with competent mechanics, it could be back in the air in less than a month. I assisted in the repair of two Boeing 707's in the 60's where one had undershot the runway at Guadalupe , tearing off both main gears, all four engines and struts and slid for 6000 feet on the belly, grinding down the keel beam chord to six inches in depth.
Boeing AOG (Airplane On Ground) crew had it back in the air in 30 days. While they were repairing the AF airplane, a South African 707 did the same thing in Nairobi and they had it in the air in 33 days. They will fix that 767 and they had better find out who screwed up the central hydraulics system.
I don't share the amazement about the landing, I saw that a few times during the war and it isn't a big thing. To compare it with Scullenburger's landing on the Hudson is no comparison at all. Scully was DEAD STICK and had no time to prepare anything. The LOT pilot had plenty of time to put it together and did what he was supposed to do.

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0MPy5pRobE&NR=1[/ame]

 

That's what I was thinking. Landing on a two legged stool doesn't seem like it could be controlled nearly as well as sliding down the runway on the belly of the plane.

 

I saw that footage in 1945. Both incidents took place on Iwo Jima, if I remember. The first B-29 incident is incomplete, it was caught in propwash and doesn't show the stall and cartwheel when the right wing tip hit the ground. The footage of the B-29 that erupted in flames after the gear collapsed was shot up and damaged. Nothing that relates to the Hudson or LOT incidents.

 

That makes the most sense.