Unsafe Gear Up

mjg407

mjg407

Well-Known Member
You take off on a reposition flight and on bringing the gear up, you get an unsafe right main up, confirmed by the tower who immediately informs you that your main is still hanging in the wind. You do your procedures which result in a safe three down and locked at which point your copilot states "Poop! (or the NSFW version)". You look at him and ask what's up, and he answers....

"I got distracted in preflight and left the gear pin in"......


Do you?


  1. Continue on your way with the three gear down to avoid the embarrassment, you have sufficient gas to make it to your destination with the gear down.
  2. Land ask tower to shut down on the taxiway to go pull the pin and hope no one is the smarter? Take off and get on with the day.
  3. Land and call maintenance and let them know what happened
  4. Land pull the pin, and then send out a lessons learned to all the pilots in your company on the CRM breakdown that led to the incident?
 
(4) Sounds the most logical. I'd hate to get to the destination, only to have to miss for whatever reason and pop a motor at the same time.

-mini
 
Probably #3.

First as others have said I would want to avoid the potential of a Gear Down missed (could be pretty bad depending on the AC). This would be a good point to "break the chain" in a string of events.

Secondly I don't have knowledge if this sort of event could potentially damage the gear system or hydraulic system. I'd assume not, but you know what they say about ASS-U-M(e)ing.

At minimum I'd return to the field, call MX, get their take on things, remove the pin and get on with my day.
 
Baronman said:
P
Secondly I don't have knowledge if this sort of event could potentially damage the gear system or hydraulic system. I'd assume not, but you know what they say about ASS-U-M(e)ing.
Click to expand...
Good call.

Can we combine 3 with 4? Let's let others learn from our mistake so it doesn't cause any problems in the future.

-mini
 
Baronman said:
Secondly I don't have knowledge if this sort of event could potentially damage the gear system or hydraulic system. I'd assume not, but you know what they say about ASS-U-M(e)ing.

At minimum I'd return to the field, call MX, get their take on things, remove the pin and get on with my day.
Click to expand...
I likes the ways you thinks.
 
With my luck..I'd assume it wouldn't damage anything...Then at FL320 as I was kicking back and ripping into my M&M pack I'd get a nice "DING" with a HYDR1 LO PRESS EICAS.

The rest of the uneventful flight to the nearest suitable airport would be spent thinking how to explain this one.....Why didn't I just return the first time and call MX?
 
Let me add, destination field is one hour of flight time, CAVU the entire way, you have 3.5 hours of fuel on board, and suitable divert fields all the way.
 
mjg407 said:
You take off on a reposition flight and on bringing the gear up, you get an unsafe right main up, confirmed by the tower who immediately informs you that your main is still hanging in the wind. You do your procedures which result in a safe three down and locked at which point your copilot states "Poop! (or the NSFW version)". You look at him and ask what's up, and he answers....

"I got distracted in preflight and left the gear pin in"......


Do you?


  1. Continue on your way with the three gear down to avoid the embarrassment, you have sufficient gas to make it to your destination with the gear down.
  2. Land ask tower to shut down on the taxiway to go pull the pin and hope no one is the smarter? Take off and get on with the day.
  3. Land and call maintenance and let them know what happened
  4. Land pull the pin, and then send out a lessons learned to all the pilots in your company on the CRM breakdown that led to the incident?
Click to expand...

5. Backhand the co-pilot, take away his single-anchor wings, and give him double-anchor wings.
 
MikeD said:
5. Backhand the co-pilot, take away his single-anchor wings, and give him double-anchor wings.
Click to expand...
Nice, the irony is the copilot was a former FE....

So true story... falls under the lines of there are those who have and those who will......

During preflight my copilot got distracted pulled two of the three pins. I've been trying to be less of a checklist Nazi so have been allowing folks to do their flows and silent checklist. I pushed the I believe button trusting the copilot had done his job, also, I was a victim of not following my own SOP (complacency, poor leadership and assertiveness on my part). We landed, pulled clear of the runway, shut down, and pulled the pin. In the colorful history of the mighty Orion, this has happened numerous times before, so we knew no need for maintenance. The next morning I sent out an email to all explaining how the "boss" screwed up, and everyone should watch out for complacency.
 
The answer is to return to the field. Why...because that pays more. You get paid for the RTF and still for the actual leg once you fix the gear pin.

:sarcasm:, sort of

Next, get the company to add gear pin checks to the before start checklist.
 
5. Land and call maintenance and let them know what happened, and then send out a lessons learned to all the pilots in your company, so that the other guy never lives it down.

Oh, and make sure you get a picture of him fishing the pin out, with good captions.
 
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