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Comment by jessermeyer | Hacker News Reader

Ignorant of ... lowering the landing gears to land? It's just astonishing.

It gets really easy to miss something like that. I've not missed the landing gear - but something goes a bit sideways and you are out of practice - things get skipped.

I've, for example, left the carb heat on when I had to go around. The hot summer air, combined with a C152 at max load, made for a hair raising takeoff. At 500' or so, the instructor casually asked if I was going to turn off the carb heat, which improves engine performance quite a bit.

Figure I'll fly 30 or so hours this year. The normal workflows get rusty, which is why checklists are such a thing.

When someone does a belly up landing, what usually ends up being the expensive part is the prop smacking the tarmac, the engine must be rebuilt.

This is what it looks like from the inside. Notice the beep that the pilot... missed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K4QHpVXtxI

There is different between that an hearing an audible warning annoying the shit out of you saying “Too low. Gear. Too low. Gear.”

It's pretty common.

I don't fly retractable gear aircraft, but I did spend several months exclusively flying a Citabria. On my first flight back in a more typical Cessna 172, I went through the downwind, base, and final legs as usual.

After landing and getting the plane stopped, I turned to my instructor and commented that the landing sight picture seemed a lot steeper than what I had remembered.

He smiled and pointed to the flap switch, which I had completely forgotten about. The Citabria doesn't have flaps.

Gear up landings are one of the most common insurance claims for aircraft. It’s more common than you might think, even with experienced pilots.

Is there any kind of indicator in the cockpit to remind the pilot? A light? A voice (like the stall voice), that says, "Hey doofus, you're descending and close to landing, so LOWER THE GEAR!"

A friend of mine that years ago (pre-F-18) was a carrier-rated Navy fighter pilot had, after he got out, flown a Mooney for a couple decades. His wife also a pilot. He always went down the checklist verbally, every time. One time on approach he said: “Gear down. Three in the green.” meaning gear down and locked indicator on all three wheels. His wife said: “You do not have three in the green.”

The human brain is a funny thing. It will convince you of things that are not there just out of habit.

Yeah - checklists can become almost a chant, more music than informational.

"Pointing and calling" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling) appears to address this.

When I cross a road I usually quickly look two or three times to check traffic, even when it's one-way. This way, I make sure that even if I'm in a hurry, I'll likely take a look at least once at each side.

In this case, this video linked elsewhere in this thread described this happening here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO5rXxJRmf4&t=5m48s

(I think this is meant to be an accurate simulation of the same type of aircraft under the same conditions.)

The current top comment in this thread also quotes the investigator report for this crash as saying

> According to the FDR and CVR recordings several warnings and alerts such as over-speed, landing gear not down and ground proximity alerts were disregarded.

So, yep. Although in the simulation, at least, this particular one is not a voice alert but is an annoying bell (with details of the reasons for the alert available elsewhere in the cockpit).

There is. Some planes beep, others literally play a warning "too low, gear, too low, gear" in the cockpit and headsets.

But gear up landings don't happen in a normal stable approach in nice weather. Gear up landings happen when something else is going on taking all the pilots' attention. Like in this incident they were too high, too fast and descending too quickly. That causes a lot of other warnings and distractions, so they completely didn't hear the gear warning.

You're not wrong at all, and there is. It's just surprisingly easy to filter it out. If something new or non-standard is happening (ATC gave you an unusual approach, there's a traffic conflict, etc) you WILL start filtering out the less important information such as the screech of a gear horn or some other in-your-face indicator right through touchdown.

The thing about flying an aircraft is while it's 90% boring monotony, takeoff, approach and landing are all extremely time sensitive operations. It's easy to become cognitively saturated or to "get behind the aircraft". You can only go forward and you're going really fast so everything has a deadline.

The best description would be like when you were learning to drive and you merged onto a highway the first time. Lots going on, can't slow down, just have to commit and try to keep up.

I’m not a pilot, but I think there’s a “too low” warning

Most airplanes have a "too slow" warning as well, e.g. a speed at which the gear ought to be down because there isn't any other reason to be going so slow except to be landing. The speed also factors into gear retraction, e.g. you are not going fast enough to fly, so gear retraction will not be actuated even if commanded.

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