767 Lands with Gear Up in Warsaw

1 November 2011; LOT 767-300; SP-LPC; flight 16; Warsaw, Poland: The aircraft was on a scheduled international flight from Newark, NJ to Warsaw, a flight that was uneventful until shortly before landing when the crew was unable to lower the landing gear. The crew continued to fly and burn off fuel for about 90 minutes, giving emergency crews time to foam the runway, and allowing the authorities to dispatch a pair of F-16s to inspect the LOT aircraft. The crew executed a successful gear up landing that resulted in no injuries among the 220 passengers and 11 crew members.

Gear up landings, while spectacular, typically end as this event did, with the aircraft largely intact and no one injured. What is unusual is that it landed with all of the gear up. More typical is what happened on October 18, 2011 when the crew of an IranAir 727 on a flight from Moscow to Tehran had to land with its landing gear, in this case the nose landing gear, still retracted. As was the case with the LOT 767 landing, because of the skill of the crew, this event was spectacular, but not tragic. There were no injuries among the 94 passengers and 19 crew members.

Gear up landings in Warsaw and Tehran

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Russian Airliner Makes Emergency Landing at Abandoned Airport

7 September 2010; Alrosa Mirny Air Enterprise; Tu154M; RA-85684; flight 514, Izhma, Russia: The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight from Udachny to Moscow, Russia. While en route at about FL347 near over Usinsk, Russia, the aircraft experienced a complete electrical failure that resulted in a loss of navigational equipment, fuel pumps, and flaps.

Effects of loss of electrical power
The Tupolev Tu154 uses the electric pumps that move the fuel from wing and center section fuel tanks into an engine feed tank. Inoperative fuel pumps left the crew with just the usable fuel in the engine feed tank, which provided about 30 minutes of flying time. Although the flaps are hydraulically driven, the switches that control the flaps are electrically driven, preventing the crew from using flaps during any landing attempt.

Successful emergency landingThe crew chose to land the airplane at an abandoned runway near the town of Izhma. The runway is about 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) long, and the aircraft overran the runway by about 150-200 meters, plowing through trees and other vegetation, and coming to rest in soft ground. According to a report in RT.com, one of the passengers described the aircraft as “cutting the tree tops like a lawnmower.” None of the nine crew members or 72 passengers were injured.

News report on emergency landing



Shorter news report on emergency landing

Additional Information
Accident information from Wikipedia
Russian plane crashes

Comic relief and plane crashes
When planes crash and everyone walks away to fly again, the world breaths a sigh of relief. When there is a happy ending like with this Alrosa accident, one of the ways that the average person responds is with a bit of humor. The following cartoon depicting Mother Nature's reaction to the impending emergency landing was published by the TV-Novosti site RT.com.

Two Veteran Airline Captains Discuss the Crash of a Spanair MD82

The previous podcast reviewed the initial findings from the Spanish accident investigation. The video version of the podcast also included portions of a security camera video that captured the final moments of the flight. This podcast features a discussion that was originally recorded on August 23rd, 2008, three days after the crash of the Spanair MD82, and featured Capt. Tom Bunn of the SOAR fear of flying organization, and Capt. Steve Fisher, a veteran airline pilot who has flown for a major US airline for over two decades.

Capt. Bunn has been a guest previously on the show, and in this episode he'll talk about some of the anxieties and concerns that have been expressed to him by some passengers.

In the days following the Spanair crash, I brought Capt. Bunn and Capt. Fisher together to provide insights into the mechanics of flying a large jet transport, especially the MD82, and to give the audience an idea of the kind of training and preparation pilots go through to prepare for emergencies during takeoff.

Early on in our conversation, the two captains discussed some of the issues that came up during the the first few days of the investigation, including a problem with a temperature sensor that caused the crew of the accident aircraft to return to the terminal after its first takeoff attempt.

You can use the following link for the podcast: Audio: MP3

Additional information about the Spanair accident, including links to a video showing the crash, and links to further updates from the investigation, will be available at http://spanair.airsafe.org.

For other AirSafe.com podcasts, visit http://podcast.airsafe.org