The kid raised the gear?

mikea

mikea

Touchdown! Greaser!
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a father and his six-year-old son were in the twin-engine four-seat plane. It was later determined that the boy apparently pulled the landing gear lever just as the plane touched down, retracting the landing gear and putting the plane on its belly. It skidded to stop without injuring either passenger.


http://www.10news.com/news/31328161/detail.html?source=kgtv
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Possibilities:
  1. It's true. Stay tuned to see if he lets the kid live.
  2. Dad pulled the gear when he wanted to raise the flaps. Will he let the kid live so he can talk?
 
Never land when someone is waving a big X at you.
 
It's OBVIOUS why the incident occurred:

" The airpark doesn't have an air traffic control tower. "
 
Here's another '69 55D panel.

Gear switch is kinda right there in front of the kid.

"Look Daddy -- I help!"

Another reason to push back the seat and crank down the shoulder belt strap -- if that's what really happened.

048450.jpg
 
Once I had to evacuate my family in a company aircraft from an approaching hurricane. My wife and older boy were in the back and me and my daughter were in the front. The boy had flown with me VFR and wanted to do so again, but this trip was going to be IFR and he was melting down when I told him he wouldn't be able to fly...so in the back with mom he went.

So we're going to APF in a congo line of PA-28's. We get vectored out over the gulf for the VOR apporach. On the inbound leg, about 5 miles from shore, the engine quit. I thought we were done for. I looked down and saw that our 2 year old girl had pulled the 'big shinny red knob' towards her.

That was the Mixture. She killed our engine at 1,000 feet or so over the gulf 5 to 10 miles from shore. I saw the problem and jammed the mixture back up. The engine caught and we landed without further incident other than a story I'm telling 14 years later.

Point is...it could happen.
 
I had a Gulfstream 690C pilot that had the gear go up after starting the first (RH) engine. It turns out that his boy had been inside the day before, they think he put the handle up! The squawt switch only prevents the handle from being positioned up with power on. If the gear selector is up on a 690, the gear will be coming up as soon as the engine driven pump is working.

As sad as this is, this was the second time I knew that this has happened. One was a new 695A Commander.
 
kmead said:
I had a Gulfstream 690C pilot that had the gear go up after starting the first (RH) engine. It turns out that his boy had been inside the day before, they think he put the handle up! The squawt switch only prevents the handle from being positioned up with power on. If the gear selector is up on a 690, the gear will be coming up as soon as the engine driven pump is working.

As sad as this is, this was the second time I knew that this has happened. One was a new 695A Commander.
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So the plane fell what? 6 inches? Was there any damage?

: )
 
kmead said:
I had a Gulfstream 690C pilot that had the gear go up after starting the first (RH) engine. It turns out that his boy had been inside the day before, they think he put the handle up! The squawt switch only prevents the handle from being positioned up with power on. If the gear selector is up on a 690, the gear will be coming up as soon as the engine driven pump is working.

As sad as this is, this was the second time I knew that this has happened. One was a new 695A Commander.
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My preflight checklist for the Arrow calls for checking that the gear switch is DOWN before turning on the master. There's no excuse for this.
 
Ghery said:
My preflight checklist for the Arrow calls for checking that the gear switch is DOWN before turning on the master. There's no excuse for this.
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The Navion (at least mine) has the check for the gear handle three times before engine start. There's no squat switch (I've seen exactly one retrofit) and the gear lever is hydraulic. Once the prop starts to spin, the pump will try to bring the gear up. It generally succeeds on the nose gear. The T-28 has a similar issue and someone here posted a video of that happening (it took a little forward motion of the plane to move it.

If you've got a Navion with the AD/SB's all complied with, it's very hard to inadvertently move the gear lever. It's almost impossible to do from the right seat even... (when I let my instructor shoot landings to get his currency, I handle the retraction for him).
 
Ghery said:
My preflight checklist for the Arrow calls for checking that the gear switch is DOWN before turning on the master. There's no excuse for this.
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I've got two checks before master on. And my plane has squat switches in addition.

Hydraulic-driven with an electric pump.
 
HerrGruyere said:
Totally off topic but I just saw the old-style prop-where-the-throttle-should-be quadrant.
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Continuing the thread drift, throttles in the middle make perfect sense if the plane is flown from the right as well as the left seat.
 
Captain said:
So the plane fell what? 6 inches? Was there any damage?

: )
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Yes it was damaged. The antennas on the belly pushed up into the belly then the plane leaned to the right allowing the spinning for start RH propeller to hit the ramp. Another bad day in aviation!

As Champion spark plugs used to say "its fun to fly"
 
When I was in VAQ 129 we had a pilot that liked to over ride the gear lever and place it in the up position prior to pushing the throttles up for take off, the squat switches will hold the gear down until the aircraft is airborne.

Well almost every time, once he allowed the aircraft to get a little too light an as the nose gear came up so did the mains, and they turn 90 degrees to the outboards as they retract, but they were not off the ground, so they dragged the EA6B down back to the runway. When I got to the scene the crew was standing on the runway all safe. but I looked up into the cockpit the gear handle was in the up position, I asked the pilot "don't you want to put that handle down before the skipper sees it" he did, and all was good again, the accident investigators called it a mechanical failure.
 
gismo said:
Continuing the thread drift, throttles in the middle make perfect sense if the plane is flown from the right as well as the left seat.
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...which is why that concept was started with the DC-3. However, its utility in typically single-piloted aircraft is negated, which is why the light plane industry standardized on the typical TPM layout several decades ago.
 
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