Ways to Avoid LGRMS

by ANN Correspondent Rob Finfrock

Three Green!

It's an axiom at least as old as retractable landing gear on airplanes: when it comes to landing with the gear up, there are two types of pilots: "there are those who have, and those who will." Perhaps you've even done it yourself, only to have felt that sickening feeling in your stomach exactly one-half second before the fuselage of your airplane made contact with the pavement.

Tom Turner does not believe that this scenario is inevitable for anyone who chooses to fly an airplane that tucks its gear up. Through extensive research of all landing gear related mishaps (LGRMs) in the United States over the past five years, he has arrived at some ways for pilots to avoid this airplane - and ego - bruising mistake. AirVenture 2005 attendees had the chance to hear his thoughts at his forum "Those Who Have and Those Who Won't: Avoiding Landing Gear-Related Mishaps."

"To think that you will inevitably have a gear up landing, or have your landing gear collapse, just because you fly an RG airplane - that's similar to saying that all pilots, if they fly long enough, will eventually run out of fuel," said Turner, now the operator of Mastery Flight Training in Wichita, KS, as well as Manager of Technical Services for the American Bonanza Society.

According to statistics Turner obtained from general aviation insurance company Avemco, as many as half of all certified, piston-engine, retractable gear aircraft mishaps reported to the insurance company are landing gear related. In addition to those incidents where the landing gear failed during the rollout after landing, or suffered a mechanical problem, "about 35-percent of those are the classic gear up, 'oops, I forgot,' type of accidents," said Turner. "There are techniques and procedures we can follow that allow us to avoid aviation mishaps such as these."

To lessen the chances that forgetfulness or distraction might cause an LGRM, Turner says that above all pilots should change their attitudes while flying an RG aircraft, beginning during training. "Habit patterns employed in fixed-gear airplanes can at times set a pilot up for LGRM when flying with retractable landing gear," commented Turner. "The traditional "three times around the patch" RG checkout does not provide enough time to replace the law of primacy with the law of practice, which states we do what we practice the most, and the law of recency, that we do what we learned most recently."

In keeping with that philosophy, Turner believes that the traditional "touch-and-go" practice procedure should be discouraged. "You're actually defeating a habit pattern of waiting until you get to the end of your landing roll to clean up the airplane. A touch-and-go encourages a rapid reconfiguration of the airplane, and that's what we're trying to avoid."
 
Pilots should also become familiar with the types of gear-up warnings that their aircraft utilize, and in what conditions those warnings may not function. For example, most aircraft use a system that notes the position of the flaps relative to throttle setting. To sound the gear horn, the flaps usually need to be fully deployed with the throttle at a reduced power setting -- a system that might not work when flying an approach into strong or gusty winds.

"You're carrying power into the headwind, and most of us have been taught to land with less than full flaps in strong winds," says Turner.  

While nearly all LGRMs are nonfatal, and usually result in little personal injury (apart from the aforementioned pilot's ego,) they are very expensive. According to Avemco, the average insurance claim amount is more than $45,000 for repairs to aircraft damaged from LGRMs, mostly due to the costs of engine rebuilding following a prop strike.

An even more sobering figure: eight percent of all dollars paid out by Avemco for aviation claims - "including multimillion dollar payouts on claims that had nothing to do with LGRMs," according to Turner - have gone to repairing aircraft damaged from landing gear related mishaps.

"Just think of the reduced costs of aircraft repair and insurance if we can significantly reduce this cause of nearly half of all RG-airplane accidents."

FMI: www.bonanza.org, www.thomaspturner.com