 |
Aviation News Talk Pilot Stories, Safety Tips & General Aviation NewsAuthor: Max Trescott Aviation News Talk Network
General Aviation news, pilot tips for beginners & experts, interviews, listener questions answered, technical details on G1000 & Perspective glass cockpits & flying GPS approaches. 40 yrs experience flying general aviation aircraft. As an active flight instructor, I bring my daily experiences in the air to this show to help teach pilots and future pilots to fly safely. I'm a Platinum Cirrus CSIP instructor and work with people who are thinking about buying a new or used SR20 or SR22. Go to AviationNewsTalk.com for my contact information, or to click on Listener Questions, which lets you speak into your phone to leave a question you'd like answered on the show. Language: en Genres: Aviation, Leisure, News Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
426 Gear-Up Landings & Gear Collapses: How to Prevent Them with Tom Turner + GA News
Episode 426
Wednesday, 26 August, 2026
Gear-up landings are often dismissed as embarrassing pilot mistakes, but landing gear mishaps are far more common, complicated, and expensive than many pilots realize. In this episode, Max talks with Tom Turner of the American Bonanza Society Air Safety Foundation about why gear-up landings and landing gear collapses continue to happen—and the operating habits and maintenance practices that can prevent them. Turner says the Beechcraft Bonanza, Baron, Debonair, and Travel Air fleet averages about one reported landing gear mishap every week. Those events represent roughly 40 percent of the mishaps reported to the American Bonanza Society. And because many landing gear events do not meet NTSB reporting thresholds, Turner says contacts in the insurance, aircraft rebuilding, and salvage industries believe the actual number may be two to three times higher. The problem is not unique to Beechcraft. Turner previously tracked landing gear events across piston retractable-gear aircraft and found comparable or even higher rates in some other types. Landing gear mishaps also have an outsized impact on aircraft insurance because a seemingly survivable gear-up landing can result in propeller damage, an engine teardown, belly damage, and repair costs high enough for an insurer to total the airplane. Much of the conversation focuses on developing habits that make forgetting the landing gear less likely. Turner teaches the concept "gear down to go down." Rather than beginning the final descent simply by reducing power, landing gear extension becomes the event that initiates the descent from traffic pattern altitude or onto the final portion of an instrument approach. He also teaches Gear Extension Altitude, or GEA. On a straight-in or other nonstandard arrival, the pilot selects an altitude below which the airplane will not descend until the landing gear has been extended and confirmed. Max relates two occasions during his flying career when normal landing gear cues broke down. In one, while training in a Diamond DA42, he reached the flare before his instructor revealed that the gear was still up. In another, while flying a Vision Jet instrument approach, the normal glidepath cue used for gear extension never appeared. The airplane's warning system ultimately caught the omission. That leads to one of Turner's strongest recommendations: regardless of when you normally extend the landing gear, establish a deliberate final gear confirmation on short final, around 400 to 500 feet AGL. If distraction, a changed traffic pattern, a go-around, or some other interruption causes you to miss your normal extension cue, that final check provides one more opportunity to catch the error. Warning systems alone are not enough. Turner describes pilots who continued toward landing while gear warning horns sounded and bright warning lights flashed. During high workload, pilots may simply stop processing repetitive warnings. In multi-engine training, the problem can become particularly insidious because pilots may listen to a landing gear warning horn throughout a simulated engine-out exercise and effectively tune it out before landing. Turner recommends using more than cockpit lights to verify the gear. Listen to the gear motor and notice whether it sounds normal. Feel and observe the expected change in drag and pitch. Compare airspeed, power, descent rate, and aircraft performance with what you normally expect. Then verify the cockpit indications. ABS even recommends holding the gear handle until this entire confirmation process is complete. Go-arounds introduce another human-factors trap. Pilots may vividly remember extending the gear—but the memory may be from the previous trip around the pattern. Turner favors making a go-around resemble a normal takeoff, then using the same normal extension cue on the next approach. Whatever technique a pilot chooses, the key is consistency and making sure the cue will still occur following a go-around. The discussion then turns to touch-and-go landings, which both Max and Tom strongly discourage in retractable-gear airplanes. A pilot reaching to retract the flaps can inadvertently select the landing gear instead. They similarly recommend not reconfiguring the airplane during the landing roll. Wait until the airplane is clear of the runway and preferably stopped on the taxiway before moving flap or similar controls. And pilots should not assume squat switches will save them. Turner describes observations showing that systems tied to weight-on-wheels switches may not recognize the airplane as firmly on the ground until surprisingly late in the landing roll—and may switch to flight mode early during takeoff. Bumps and unloading of the landing gear can further reduce their effectiveness. Gear collapses also have a significant maintenance component. At American Bonanza Society maintenance evaluation events, aircraft are placed on jacks and their landing gear rigging and downlock tensions are carefully inspected. Turner says it is not unusual for roughly two airplanes out of a 24-aircraft event to have gear tensions so far out of tolerance that the owners are advised not to fly until adjustments are made. ABS considers improper rigging serious enough that it developed a 38-step landing gear inspection checklist to supplement normal Beechcraft inspection procedures. Finally, Turner discusses what to do when the gear itself malfunctions. If the gear begins to extend and then jams, perhaps popping the motor circuit breaker, repeatedly cycling it may turn a damaged push rod or rod end into a complete failure. Instead, Turner recommends following the airplane's approved manual landing gear extension procedure, which can place less stress on a compromised system and may give the pilot the best chance of getting all the gear down. The episode highlights the American Bonanza Society's Put Your Gear Down campaign, which makes decades of landing gear operating and maintenance information available to pilots of all retractable-gear airplanes. Its goal is simple: replace the familiar saying that there are "those who have and those who will" have a gear mishap with a third category—pilots who use disciplined operating and maintenance practices to make sure it never happens to them. If you're getting value from this show, please support the show via PayPal, Venmo, Zelle or Patreon. Support the Show by buying a Lightspeed ANR Headsets Max has been using only Lightspeed headsets for nearly 25 years! I love their tradeup program that let's you trade in an older Lightspeed headset for a newer model. Start with one of the links below, and Lightspeed will pay a referral fee to support Aviation News Talk. Lightspeed Delta Zulu Headset $1299NEW – Lightspeed Zulu 4 Headset $1099 Lightspeed Zulu 3 Headset $949Lightspeed Sierra Headset $749 My Review on the Lightspeed Delta Zulu Send us your feedback or comments via email If you have a question you'd like answered on the show, let listeners hear you ask the question, by recording your listener question using your phone. News Stories FAA Flags 3D Printed Cockpit Accessories As Unapproved Parts Satellite Device Guides Cessna Accident Rescue FAA's ATC modernization is moving faster FAA Accepts HIMS Reform Petition For Review 8 killed in plane crash at remote Alaska radar site Cirrus Burns During Parachute Deployment Aging GA Fleet Faces Growing Aircraft Parts Challenge Teton Civil Air Patrol Squadron Deactivated, Cessna 206 Reassigned EAA Chapter 1240 Funds Stolen Mentioned on the ShowBuy Max Trescott's G3000 Book Call 800-247-6553 UAV News Talk - Archer Aviation episode NTSB News Talk - episode #37 EAA HeartLand Chapter 1240 Put Your Gear Down Website Free Index to the first 282 episodes of Aviation New Talk So You Want To Learn to Fly or Buy a Cirrus seminars Online Version of the Seminar Coming Soon – Register for Notification Check out our recommended ADS-B receivers, and order one for yourself. Yes, we'll make a couple of dollars if you do. Get the Free Aviation News Talk app for iOS or Android. Check out Max's Online Courses: G1000 VFR, G1000 IFR, and Flying WAAS & GPS Approaches. Find them all at: https://www.pilotlearning.com/ Social Media Like Aviation News Talk podcast on Facebook Follow Max on Instagram Follow Max on Twitter Listen to all Aviation News Talk podcasts on YouTube or YouTube Premium "Go Around" song used by permission of Ken Dravis; you can buy his music at kendravis.com If you purchase a product through a link on our site, we may receive compensation.
