If a person “could imagine” it beforehand, then it would not happen. That’s the trick.
I was 100 % sure for 20 years that I would never a) take off with the pitot cover on and b) without a fuel cap. I did both.
I do thorough pre-flights, before every flight. And it happened nevertheless. While I was refueling the aircraft I got a phone call. Next thing I did i took off without the left fuel cap of my Piper Warrior and only realized it 20 minutes later when, during a steep turn over the Munich center i saw the fuel running over the wing … (I flew back and the fuel cap was on the runway). The Pitot cover: I never knew why i forgot to remove it, but I realized it immediately (“Speed alive” …. uh, uh, … not alive!).
Yes – that sort of thing is easily done and I have done it myself.
The problem with gear up approaches is that the plane behaves so very differently. The lack of the landing gear makes it much more slippery and more difficult to get the speed down.
And an approach and a landing is not something one should ever do in a hurry. Well, maybe if a passenger is having a heart attack or something like that. If a passenger is merely screaming (because they are terrified, etc) let them bloody scream! Switch the intercom to “pilot only” 
This touches on the other thread about whether one should fly steep approaches. If you do, you will never get the plane down without the gear down. But if you do what many PPLs are taught – a shallow high power approach – then it becomes much more possible. Where I am based I would say 3/4 of approaches are extremely low; of the order of 1 degree “glideslope”. One such pilot hit a model aircraft the other day, flown from a nearby hill (Class G, model below 7kg, so nobody is legally at fault).
Obviously if you have very low currency on the type then anything is possible, and I think that was the case in the Megeve TB20 case. I am sure they heard the warning horn but didn’t know what it was.
Had a look at the video (no time until now), and after the ‘landing’ they talk about the speed. The co-pilot says something like ‘I was concerned about the speed, this was going too fast’ and the pilot also comments on the speed. Other than that the expletives that could be expected after this ‘arrival’.
To my mind, this approach went pear-shaped from the moment they turned final. It’s a bit hard to judge from the POV of a little wide-angle camera, but they look hot-and-high from the outset. While I have never been to Megeve, looking at the video there isn’t really any need to dive-bomb into there. I guess they were overwhelmed by the unfamiliar surroundings and position of the strip. The visual picture simply looks very different flying into a strip like this from landing on a more common rwy surrounded by more or less flat land.
fly a fixed gear plane
My first thought when I saw this thread, pretty impressive that Jan got this in as post #2
The visual picture simply looks very different flying into a strip like this from landing on a more common rwy surrounded by more or less flat land.
Maybe that is another good point which reduces the chances of it happening.
If going to a place where the “visual aspect” is misleading, one should look up the airfield elevation, add say 1000ft to it, and set themselves up say 3nm up the road, and then fly a stabilised descent. Like here
Agree, Peter, this also gives you an ‘out’. What also helps is to ‘fly’ the approach a couple of times in X-Plane, ideally on a high realism setting. The aim here being to get a visual picture and ‘feel’ for the approach, not to do the perfect flight-sim landing.
A warning system that goes “bleeep”, “boooop”, “mooooooooh” or whatever and leaves the pilot to figure out what that particular noise means is antiquated. This kind of system contributed to over 100 people being killed in the Helios desaster, where the crew got confused about what a particular “moooooooh” meant, started to fix the wrong problem, and passed out from Hypoxia, this is not just about a missed landing gear…
As long as people fly aircraft, they will make mistakes. We can use SOPs, checklists, training as much as we want, there will be mistakes.
So why do we not have a warning system that says “Gear Not Down, Lower Gear” in a really annoying voice? Or “Cabin Altitude, Stop Climb”?
I am sure Peter can cook up a circuit that does that and costs a few dollar to produce, and could be wired into the aircraft in a couple of hours. What gets in the way is certification, one of the biggest preventers of innovation and safety in light GA.
If I ever happen to own a retractable, it will be able to talk to me like that, and I will blame that capability on magic, given that AFAIK this is legal, while installing a little box is not.
If you have a dedicated beeper for the gear, then it’s trivial to build a sound synthesiser which does it in any of a range of voices (including your ex wife, if you can find a close replica) using off the shelf stuff.
You would just have to disable it when you take the plane to a maintenance company…
The problem with gear up approaches is that the plane behaves so very differently.
Obviously if you have very low currency on the type then anything is possible.
Absolutely agree. My RG experience is limited and I had to make a high speed approach in Zurich. The weather was also challenging and although I’ve flown that approach more than ten times, I figured out I was without gear only about 1.5 nm before touchdown. And with my experience on that aircraft I would have never figured out it was “different”, especially when making a high speed approach, so I just got lucky. I suppose after several hundred landings in the type it would be much different.
So why do we not have a warning system that says “Gear Not Down, Lower Gear” in a really annoying voice?
Many years ago, I was working in a client’s office, when he took me out for lunch. We travelled in his car, a Renault. On the way back, his low fuel light came on, and a voice spoke “Petrol” in an annoying squeaky voice. There just happened to be a petrol station 500mtr ahead, and he swung into it, saying “Sorry. But that voice gets very annoying very quickly! I have to put petrol in it now!”
