3 ms·
If the plane can tell it's super low the ground -- low enough to sound an alarm for it -- and that's a common mistake... why not just have the plane automatical
by Figs 2y ago
If the plane can tell it's super low the ground -- low enough to sound an alarm for it -- and that's a common mistake... why not just have the plane automatically deploy the landing gear?
- hansvm 2y agoDoing so complicates other hairy scenarios because of the increased hydraulic/power demands, reduced clearance, increased drag on the plane, worse handling, and the fact that in some emergencies you want a gear-up landing and would expect pilots to simply make the opposite error (forgetting about the gear being automatically deployed) some fraction of the time.
- Figs 2y agoHmm. Are those situations more likely than forgetting to put the gear down? (Serious question -- I don't know the answer, and I'm curious.)
- hansvm 2y agoI think so, and they're definitely more severe. Gear-up landings occur in something like 1/150k flights, and they're rarely fatal. Stalls happen in roughly 1/100k, near-stalls more frequently, and if unrecovered then they are almost always fatal. The one plane I know of with auto-retracting gear had a fatal stall because of the feature, so it's not exactly a theoretical argument, but there haven't been a lot of empirical studies.
- agubelu 2y agoYou're talking about GA flights, not commercial ones, right? I do not believe that a gear-up landing occurs once a day on average in commercial airliners.
- tekla 2y agoYou do not want auto gear down. There are situations where having the gear down might makes much much worse and you might not be able to be in a situation where you can bring them back up.