..I had a gear up landing - and my first declaration

asicer said:
NTSB 830 (I don’t know why I still remember this from my student pilot days):

‘Engine failure or damage limited to an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are not considered “substantial damage” for the purpose of this part.’
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Pretty sure damage of control surfaces meets it. But I’m no expert.


Edit. Didn’t see the flaps on your list on first read. I’m surprised. I think I’d still call.
 
Pi1otguy said:
@Tantalum, can you dispel rumors. Did tower send ominous guys in suits to bury you in paperwork for saying the "e word"?
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Im sure you are being sarcastic but it's a common enough myth to deserve an answer.

Probably as much paperwork as most emergencies.

Mine (power loss over the Rockies) generated a huge amount of paperwork. I know because I did a FOIA request for it a year later. Every controller who handled me filed a written report. Someone saved and logged the audio tapes along with the radar tracks. Clerical work to index and store.

me? A phone call from Center to make sure we were ok and an extremely pleasant follow up conversation with an ASI. Oh yes, he had paperwork too.

FAA 100%, pilot 0%.

Biggest pilot emergency paperwork I've seen was someone who didn't declare when they had an emergency.
 
Declared a dozen emergencies, military and 121… ZERO faa paperwork. A tiny bit for company policy.
 
Nice work! You didn't touch the flaps because you were focused on flying the plane, which is *exactly* what you should have been focused on. Airplane was already broken before you landed it. Perfect job on landing the broken airplane.
 
Outstanding job! No need to second guess yourself - you did it textbook. That's a fantastic experience to now have in your 'skill' bucket so to speak.
 
Thanks for sharing.
Salty said:
No way shutting engines down to reduce damage is even a blip on the radar for me.
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What about reducing time after without a plane
 
sonopoa said:
Thanks for sharing.


What about reducing time after without a plane
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Nope, no reason to distract yourself and add risk to yourself and passengers over a bunch of metal and fiberglass.
 
First off congrats on keeping it cool and most importantly keeping the passengers safe.

Just out of curiosity did this make the little NTSB reports or Kathryn's? If so did they ding you as just "landed gear up" or acknowledge that the gear was up for a reason? I had a buddy belly land a C404 years ago due to mechanical reasons and the report made it look like he just forgot the gear, which I'm sure had people at places like this mumbling unjustly about him causing our insurance rates to go up.
 
here is my .02, you did everything right. as you said, with three bladed props, a teardown is coming running or not, so why shut it down and take away the ability to go around if it doesnt go as planned on approach. good call. as to the gear, i think good call also, you put it down on one main on every crosswind landing so what is really different in this situation? you just held the wing up as long as you could as energy bled off. good job!
 
midlifeflyer said:
Im sure you are being sarcastic but it's a common enough myth to deserve an answer.

Probably as much paperwork as most emergencies.

Mine (power loss over the Rockies) generated a huge amount of paperwork. I know because I did a FOIA request for it a year later. Every controller who handled me filed a written report. Someone saved and logged the audio tapes along with the radar tracks. Clerical work to index and store.

me? A phone call from Center to make sure we were ok and an extremely pleasant follow up conversation with an ASI. Oh yes, he had paperwork too.

FAA 100%, pilot 0%.

Biggest pilot emergency paperwork I've seen was someone who didn't declare when they had an emergency.
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Yeah on every Controller who handled you. I've written them on incidents that happened thousands of miles and a few hours away from my last contact with them. Usually it's to the effect of I don't remember that guy in so many words.
 
Salty said:
I would think this would be classified as an accident, so he’ll have to call them.
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While not exhaustive, substantial damage (the threshold for declaring an event an accident) generally occurs with damage to the structure. Rip the nose gear off: minor damage. Rip the nose gear off and deform the firewall: substantial damage. We had a B727 lose an entire engine while in cruise: minor damage!
 
midlifeflyer said:
Im sure you are being sarcastic but it's a common enough myth to deserve an answer.

Probably as much paperwork as most emergencies.
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Yea, though it used to pop up a lot in "when should I declare" threads back in the day.

Actually, I'm more curious about whether the airport billed him (or rather his insurance) for patching the foot or two of asphalt he probably gouged with his mighty prop. But I won't pry that much.

Every controller who handled me filed a written report.
(Snip)
FAA 100%, pilot 0%.
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Just as well. We'd probably file the paperwork wrong anyways.
 
Good job, everyone walked away from it. My belief and action in a similar situation would be quite simple. Once the airplane failed me (and this one failed you) the insurance company owns it and all I care about is my passengers and me walking away from it after it stops moving. You did quite fine in my book.
 
When do we get to see the Ewe Toobe video of this? Will Dan Grinder be giving us his ex-spert opinion from his "Monday morning quarterback had too much to drink" perspective?
 
sonopoa said:
Ouch
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@Tools anecdote is typical for team DoD. Understand our military fleet is old and undercapitalized. Most of the defense budget largesse goes to civilian defense contractors and money hungry boutique programs like emerging 5th gen potato, not to the rank and file workhorse platforms.

As such, emergency declarations are commonplace, but largely formalities borne out of the nature of our flying and aging equipment. We also work with a measure of unqualified solos in the training side, which lend themselves to declare in very conservative scenarios, so there's a bit of dilution.

I've too lost count how many times I've declared. Hell, I declared yesterday. Catastrophically lost the cabin AC turbine at the top of a loop and suffered a rapid D while inverted. Fun times. With the AC turbine failed, zero ventilation, RAM dump valve was doing me zero favors either. Temps are kinda "balmy" down in C TX these days (that climate change boi). ruh roh. Things got physiologically challenging very quickly, if I may be euphemistic. Closest I've ever come to blowing the canopy.

With temps approaching 120F inside the canopy and zero ventilation while fully strapped to a martin baker and full life support equipment, I needed to do like the navy, and "accelerate your life". Summoned the magic E word and did like the movie Space Balls: set Ludicrous speed. To be fair, I stayed subsonic to be courteous to the taxpayers of Guadalupe and Comal county. I'm a humble indentured servant like that ;).

Always get a chuckle about the 250 below 10 zealots. If they only knew....
upload_2022-7-23_19-18-22.png

So yeah, E words are common over here. Everybody stay safe, and see and avoid. I mean it! :D
 
So there I was….

South Texas in a A4, FCLPs. Damn thing stuck full hot. LIKE AN IDIOT that’s one of the times I DIDNT declare… forgot about that! Ha!

6 measly landings, not even 30 mins… looked like I jumped in a lake when I climbed out.
 
hindsight2020 said:
@Tools anecdote is typical for team DoD. Understand our military fleet is old and undercapitalized. Most of the defense budget largesse goes to civilian defense contractors and money hungry boutique programs like emerging 5th gen potato, not to the rank and file workhorse platforms.

As such, emergency declarations are commonplace, but largely formalities borne out of the nature of our flying and aging equipment. We also work with a measure of unqualified solos in the training side, which lend themselves to declare in very conservative scenarios, so there's a bit of dilution.

I've too lost count how many times I've declared. Hell, I declared yesterday. Catastrophically lost the cabin AC turbine at the top of a loop and suffered a rapid D while inverted. Fun times. With the AC turbine failed, zero ventilation, RAM dump valve was doing me zero favors either. Temps are kinda "balmy" down in C TX these days (that climate change boi). ruh roh. Things got physiologically challenging very quickly, if I may be euphemistic. Closest I've ever come to blowing the canopy.

With temps approaching 120F inside the canopy and zero ventilation while fully strapped to a martin baker and full life support equipment, I needed to do like the navy, and "accelerate your life". Summoned the magic E word and did like the movie Space Balls: set Ludicrous speed. To be fair, I stayed subsonic to be courteous to the taxpayers of Guadalupe and Comal county. I'm a humble indentured servant like that ;).

Always get a chuckle about the 250 below 10 zealots. If they only knew....
View attachment 108865

So yeah, E words are common over here. Everybody stay safe, and see and avoid. I mean it! :D
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Many moons ago when I worked at El Toro they seemed like almost a daily occurrence. Lotsa BLC failures. F4’s. We called them Bacon Lettuce and Cheeses. Hung ordinance was far from rare everywhere I worked. While not an Emergency, an F18 that wasn’t Minimum Fuel was the unusual thing. Emergency low fuel wasn’t all that rare. This was the early days of the F18.
 
Bob Hoover was in a tail dragger single when he declared an emergency at Dulles, and landed with one down, one up. Minor damage to the wing tip. I think that I remember that he flew the Mustang again either the next day, or day after. Can not let a minor emergency mess up the airshow schedule.

The landing itself took place on a remote portion of the airport, out of sight for the public present, in case of fire or other trouble. A friend who worked at Dulles said that they had a full on presence, but no lights, no sirens, no attention grabbers. I was there that day, learned of the "crash" the next day. I was puzzled that he did not taxi back to his display parking spot after flying his routine.

His planes always had better than average factory support.
 
Salty said:
I would think this would be classified as an accident, so he’ll have to call them.
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Had a conversation with the NTSB the day of and an email exchange with FAA. Nothing scary, just a recap of the events. Our club's standard policy after any damage to a plane is to suspend the member, collect facts etc., and then hold a reinstatement meeting. I was reinstated shortly after the event

Honestly everyone was remarkably friendly and easy to talk to. If this (hopefully) is my one and only NTSB / FAA communication in my flying career then it was a relatively painless one. I had heard horror stories previously about "don't declare, FAA paperwork!" but outside of a phone call and an email thread I haven't had any onerous paperwork to fill out
 
Pi1otguy said:
@Tantalum, can you dispel rumors. Did tower send ominous guys in suits to bury you in paperwork for saying the "e word"?
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haha nope! There's no way I wasn't going to declare as it was, but it was a fairly painless process. So much for the rumors of mountains of paperwork after a declaration. I guess it might also depend on the situation and outcome naturally
 
had a PoA break while at EAA this past week, flew out in a Bonanza with a friend. Great time as always.
 
Was with a friend in a Commander going into Class D and the gear wouldn't come down. The emergency procedure got the main gear down but still had a tough time getting three greens (nose gear was very stubborn).

He declared the big "E" as we didn't know if it was locked. The trucks were waiting as we rolled past thanking them. All the paperwork involved was for the pilot and myself to send a letter detailing the event & the outcome. Obviously there was no damage and after he & I sent in a statement no more was ever said.
 
Yeah it was a bummer, one of my favorite planes too. Can't carry as much or go as fast as our Aztec but man it's pretty!
 
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