How do you forget to lower the gear?

Spring Ford said:
Like this:-

I think it's called task saturation. Hearing apparently shuts off first, I think I heard somewhere.

Gear down is not always good:-

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Often a worse outcome that gear up in error.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/avi...d-landed-with-wheels-extended-a-known-hazard/
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I wouldn’t call that vid task saturation. That’s two guys 1) not adhering to a checklist and 2) non essential chit chat during a critical stage of flight. No blaring radios, traffic everywhere, etc. Just two dudes not following proper ADM. Some of these guys in the gear ups (like the Trinidad) seem a bit old also. I wonder if they can even hear the horn going off.
 
Usually distraction. Something similar to this. Substitute terms as necessary:

 
Distraction, loss of situational awareness, task saturation. On one of my first multi flights, with my instructor I did not put the gear down until on final. We were in the pattern, and it was busy as usual.Gear should have come down on the downwind. I kept pulling the power back turning from downwind to base, base to final. The horn was going off, and I could not bleed speed but because I was new to the airplane and complex/multi flying in general it did not resonate with me what that horn meant. My instructor waited long enough to see if I would catch it, and then said "Gear?" as I was still figuring out why we weren't slowing down. It was a good learning experience. I was too focused on other things. Add in a single engine approach, or some other busyness, it can happen. At the point I realized I made the call to go around and do it again. I think this is one factor, the other is complacency, which we see in more experienced pilots. Look at some accident investigations. You will see errors that you would imagine never would happen to 10000+ hour pilots.
 
The thing that still baffles me about forgetting the gear is I've never met or heard of pilot forgetting flaps on landing. Why do so many who would never forget flaps manage to forget gear?

Then again maybe that's part of why I never managed to forget the gear. Most of my retract time is in a johnson bar Mooney. We treated the gear as a kind of speed brake in that plane so dropping it was part of what did to get slowed down enough to start hanging flaps out. If she wasn't slowing down, it was time to put your shoulder into it and get the gear out. ;)
 
A quick brows of Kathryn's report certainly reveals a lot of gear up or gear down (sea/float) incidents....
 
Juliet Hotel said:
The thing that still baffles me about forgetting the gear is I've never met or heard of pilot forgetting flaps on landing. Why do so many who would never forget flaps manage to forget gear?
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Maybe it's time to attend some local fly-in breakfasts? The main reason is, forgetting flaps usually does not cause an accident. In most light singles, the distance between the bottoms of the green and white arcs is not great enough for this mistake to manifest. I done it in the M20E, BTW. Went to flaps 10 to start dirtying the airplane, and something got me distracted and I managed to slow the airplane enough to put the gear down without flaps. When I realized that I'm landing with minimum flaps, I added a touch of power to keep it on the glideslope and that was it. Runway was long enough.
 
The float thing would be a super-easy one to mess up.

Gear down for land, Gear up for water. Geeeez.

Reminder to me - leave the amphibs to someone else to fly, and hope they don't mess it up.
 
Have you ever taken off with Carb Heat ON, or on one magneto? Forget to remove the pitot cover, pull chocks, or remove the tiedowns? Ever forget to push the mixture and/or prop forward on final? These are tasks just like the gear (but without the heavy consequences), so if you ever forgot one of those, analyze why, and you'll get an idea of how someone might forget the gear.
 
JohnAJohnson said:
Have you ever taken off with Carb Heat ON, or on one magneto? Forget to remove the pitot cover, pull chocks, or remove the tiedowns? Ever forget to push the mixture and/or prop forward on final? These are tasks just like the gear (but without the heavy consequences), so if you ever forgot one of those, analyze why, and you'll get an idea of how someone might forget the gear.
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None of those things affect the view out the front compared to speed on final though.

I'm guilty of the chocks. First time ever at full service FBO. I set the brakes, they chocked my plane, and I never saw them do it. I was confused as to why the plane wouldn't move. Since I didn't put them there, why would I look for them?
 
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strangebird said:
You cant hear the gear warning horn with noise cancelling headsets is how, FAA has a bulletin about that.
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It's important to test your ability to hear this (many retractible checklists actually have you test the gear warning on the approach), but if you're talking about ANR, I'll call nonsense. It's often easier to hear the horn with ANR than without.
 
steingar said:
Me, I tend to drop the gear before I ever hit the traffic pattern. My thought is most of the distractions and craziness happens in the pattern, not before. If I'm already configured to land, that much less chance I'll forget. Of course, I have to suck up the gear in a go-around, airplane climbs like a dog with the gear out. So it could happen to me too.
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And I had a friend that this led to a gear up. He did a perfect approach with the gear down. A plane pulled out on the runway ahead of him so he went around (sucking up the gear) but never put it back down as he came back around.

My instructor pretty much treated it as a fatal error not to check and announce the gear down on short final.
 
I've seen plenty incompetent pilots. But... forgetting to put landing gear down? HMMMMM? That is pretty out there lmao. Such an inexcusable mistake. No one should be flying a plane at that level of neglect.

@TCABM that vid tho smh
 
Ghery said:
Back when our club had an Arrow I never had trouble hearing the horn with my noise cancelling headset. What I kept hearing in my head was my original CFI saying, "Mid field, drop the gear. Turn base, three in the green. Turn final, three in the green. Short final, three in the green!". Never had a problem remembering to lower the gear.
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That's exactly what I hear. "Three in the green... Three in the green... Three in the green" I've even had CFI's try and distract me and I just ignore them. Without three in the green we have an emergency.
 
Ryan G. said:
I've seen plenty incompetent pilots. But... forgetting to put landing gear down? HMMMMM? That is pretty out there lmao. Such an inexcusable mistake. No one should be flying a plane at that level of neglect.
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I promise you I can distract you to the point where you will completely forget the gear. And I don't hold a patch on your average 4 year old, though Mrs. Steingar thinks I've the maturity of one.
 
Ryan G. said:
I've seen plenty incompetent pilots. But... forgetting to put landing gear down? HMMMMM? That is pretty out there lmao. Such an inexcusable mistake. No one should be flying a plane at that level of neglect.

@TCABM that vid tho smh
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I'm so happy to hear you're one of the pilots that'll never have this happen to themselves.

Oh wait... you're getting out of flying anyway.... .and confusing our general purpose discussion section with Classifieds.

Yeah, won't happen to you.
 
steingar said:
I promise you I can distract you to the point where you will completely forget the gear. And I don't hold a patch on your average 4 year old, though Mrs. Steingar thinks I've the maturity of one.
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Nope. Pilot isolate switch (yep, I've used it) and if that fails, a throat chop solves the problem in a hurry.
 
I am aware of at least two instances where the pilot put the gear up and landed. One forgot to retract after take-off and then retracted them for the landing. The other decided since it was only 2 minutes to the next airport to leave the gear down and then forgot and retracted it for landing.

I don't know what one plane had for a gear warning.

I know the other had a very poor gear warning system and I had strongly recommended the pilot consider installing something like this..., Obviously he did not.
http://www.flyingsafer.com/p-n-2040-1-2.html

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
Kenny Phillips said:
An Icon pilot just forgot to raise the gear.
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Well that's not saying much at all, in fact, that tracks with the marketing and target audience as a jetski toy for rich non pilots... it's actually worse than "a Cirrus pilot did X"

Ryanb said:
Just seems like a total bone-headed move to me
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It is. I'm a big fan of severe FAA penalties for idiotic actions, like running out of fuel to me is also completely moronic.. I don't think there's a reason other than just being a clown

Ultimately though, we're only human, mistakes happen:
 
Velocity173 said:
I wouldn’t call that vid task saturation. That’s two guys 1) not adhering to a checklist and 2) non essential chit chat during a critical stage of flight. No blaring radios, traffic everywhere, etc. Just two dudes not following proper ADM. Some of these guys in the gear ups (like the Trinidad) seem a bit old also. I wonder if they can even hear the horn going off.
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Maybe it’s just a couple guys who will do anything to make a viral video
 
Juliet Hotel said:
Most of my retract time is in a johnson bar Mooney. We treated the gear as a kind of speed brake in that plane so dropping it was part of what did to get slowed down enough to start hanging flaps out. If she wasn't slowing down, it was time to put your shoulder into it and get the gear out. ;)
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Exactly!!
 
I won an hour flight time at a flyin. When I redeemed it at the local flight school, the CFI did a walk around while I was toting my gear out to the airplane. When I got there, he said, “Hop in and let’s go”. I said “After I pull off the Pitot Cover”. I did my own walk around as well. Needless to say, I decided not to continue with said flight school for further activity.

Anybody can screw up anything so have a good checklist and good insurance. Use the first always and you might not have to use the second.

Cheers
 
My instructor said he had a student flying down final with the gear horn blaring. He suggested to her if she advanced the throttle slightly that noise would stop. She did.

There as a DC-9 pilot who landed gear up (Continental I think or one of the other Texas Air orgs). Essentially, the FO was flying and he says "hey this thing isn't slowing down right." The captain says "I got it" and proceeds to belly it in.
 
X3 Skier said:
I won an hour flight time at a flyin. When I redeemed it at the local flight school, the CFI did a walk around while I was toting my gear out to the airplane. When I got there, he said, “Hop in and let’s go”. I said “After I pull off the Pitot Cover”. I did my own walk around as well. Needless to say, I decided not to continue with said flight school for further activity.

Anybody can screw up anything so have a good checklist and good insurance. Use the first always and you might not have to use the second.

Cheers
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People screw things up even using a checklist though. I was going thru a cargo hook test once and my copilot, while using a checklist, put the arming switch in the wrong position. I should’ve looked up to confirm but I didn’t. I pressed emergency release on my collective and unintentionally blew the squib to the hook. Not just embarrassing but a pain for the maintenance guys as well. :(
 
EdFred said:
Except my hands are already registered as deadly weapons. :eek:
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Good luck using them after I jam my pencil in your eye. Does a number on concentration. A bad idea using violence in an enclosed space. Things can escalate quickly, and it gets very dangerous in a rapidly moving vehicle that requires skill to land safely. And remind me not to use you for a CFI. I’ll take the old harmless guy. Might even learn something.
 
steingar said:
Good luck using them after I jam my pencil in your eye. Does a number on concentration. A bad idea using violence in an enclosed space. Things can escalate quickly, and it gets very dangerous in a rapidly moving vehicle that requires skill to land safely. And remind me not to use you for a CFI. I’ll take the old harmless guy. Might even learn something.
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I'm about as certain as I can be that @EdFred was joking, and equally as certain that you aren't and don't realize he was joking.
 
Ryanb said:
How?

We got onto a V tail Bonanza discussion over in the chat room and it reminded me of the V35A that the two owners of my FBO used to have. They ended up selling it to a guy on field and it appears that he (or someone else) had a gear up landing in it down in Muscle Shoals, AL back in 2017. I saw that it was listed on a salvage auction website and evidently someone out of OK bought it.

So it brings up the question, how in H. E. double hockey sticks does someone gear up an airplane? How do you ignore the gear warning horn? Just seems like a total bone-headed move to me.
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Distraction. Lack of standard operating procedures consistently done. Letting the warning sound in normal ops. There are others but those seem to be the primary culprits.

Edit. Oh yeah. One more big one. Thinking it couldn't happen to oneself.

I think it was Rod Machado who once said, the only difference between calling ATC on the former frequency after a handoff and a gear up is the consequences.
 
Everyone, everyone!
Take a sharp knife or razor blade or what have you, and make a 1/2" slice into your palm.
Pretty deep.
A) Did it hurt?
B) Did you bleed?

Answering Yes to A) or B) or both means:

This Could Happen to You (inadvertent gear up)

Regardless of your plans to prevent it.

Accepting that is the only way we are going to improve on the problem.
We need to take it to a higher level.
There has to be some sort of active awareness-raising or something in addition to the mechanical devices and checklists we are all using.
 
Zeldman said:
Several years ago I was a passenger on a Dash 8, sitting behind the wing. I could see the left main tires. I noticed that on climbout the gear was still down, and was still down as the plane leveled off at altitude. I was wondering if I should bring it to someone's attention when I heard and felt a power reduction, followed by the tires disappearing....then power back up to cruise... ooops....:lol:

One night, this incredibly handsome pilot was departing Albuquerque at night. I noticed these 3 bright green lights on climb out and noted that they were distractingly bright. As I was looking for someway to dim the lights, I noticed the gear handle...... ooops...:lol:
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I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who has done that. o_O
 
steingar said:
Good luck using them after I jam my pencil in your eye. Does a number on concentration. A bad idea using violence in an enclosed space. Things can escalate quickly, and it gets very dangerous in a rapidly moving vehicle that requires skill to land safely. And remind me not to use you for a CFI. I’ll take the old harmless guy. Might even learn something.
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yeah that would be one way to cause a pilot to not put the gear down. Greeeeeat distraction technique.

steingar said:
I have never regarded threats of violence as humor.
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But apparently interfering with the duties of a flight crew member and breaking federal law is perfectly acceptable in your myopia.
 
Velocity173 said:
That’s true. They could’ve done it intentionally to get YT proceeds. I hear @Radar Contact makes more from YT than his ATC gig! :)
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Insurance Premium Paid - $1235.00
Go Pro - $400.00
Computer - $1600.00
Landing wheels up with gear warning horn blaring and posting it for the world to see - Priceless
For all else, there is MasterCard
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Everyone, everyone!
Take a sharp knife or razor blade or what have you, and make a 1/2" slice into your palm.
Pretty deep.
A) Did it hurt?
B) Did you bleed?

Answering Yes to A) or B) or both means:

This Could Happen to You (inadvertent gear up)

Regardless of your plans to prevent it.

Accepting that is the only way we are going to improve on the problem.
We need to take it to a higher level.
There has to be some sort of active awareness-raising or something in addition to the mechanical devices and checklists we are all using.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I think we gots some good awareness-raising going on right here. Good OP @Ryanb
 
Having recently transitioned from a fixed gear to retract I've had this on my mind.... a few thoughts.

Just to mirror what others said, IDK where this idea of not being able to hear the gear warning with ANR headsets comes from. I'm flying a Lance, I have a Bose A20, tested it out with a CFI and I can very clearly hear the thing, the A20s also don't obscure my vision of the big freaking red warning light either. Maybe certain warning horns with certain headsets are an issue? I just know I can hear mine.

What triggers that warning horn though? In my plane it's pulling the throttle back too far or putting in full flaps with the gear up. Doesn't take too much imagination to think of a scenario where you might be busy and distracted AND not do either of those things until right before touchdown so no horn until too late to figure it out. You know, assuming it works.

Or the other scenario- maybe you like descending by pulling the power way back and gliding in or something and you get used to the horn going off. Then you get busy and you ignore that pesky noise that's often in the background at another time. I suspect that's the explanation for that youtube video.

But I mean none of this should be possible right? We're all using our checklists right? You never missed an item on a checklist right? Yeah...yeah.. me neither.... but some of those other pilots probably do. :eek:
 
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