The other day I was watching Air Emergency on Nat Geo, and the airplane did an emergency on open land. It said it was moving at around 120 mph when it landed? Well my question is why did the pilot decided to land without landing gears? Are they afraid the plane might keep rolling and hit resident areas? because to me landing regular or emergency landing with gears is smoother than landing with the belly of the plane. Can anyone tell me why they didn’t use landing gears when the pilots did a crash landing in open land?
Yes people, please stop giving thumbs down to people answering my question.
On prepared or hard surfaces the landing gear may be lowered. On other plain surfaces, however, a belly landing is advised since is provides the full lower surface of the aircraft to come in contact with the ground and spread its weight over a larger area thereby precluding chances if it sinking into the soil. Landing with gear down would make the aircraft to dig into the ground and cartwheel on its nose with disastrous results.
Nov 042009
If an emergency landing is performed on a soft surface (like an open, grassy field), it is safer to have the landing gear retracted. If the gear was extended, they would dig into the ground and break off. This would cause the nose of the plane
to be pitched downward with great force, which may cause the nose to drill into the ground, destroying the front of the plane,
and possibly causing the entire plane to flip upside-down
and/or break in half.
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Westwind is right. I’ve worked on planes for the navy for several years now and am a certified technician. I’ve also seen my fair share of emergency landings. I’m in the squadron VQ-1 and we are closely related to VQ-2, both of which have had aircraft emergencies. If you don’t believe me, hit up google for 3 mins. I don’t know why he got a thumbs down.
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On prepared or hard surfaces the landing gear may be lowered. On other plain surfaces, however, a belly landing is advised since is provides the full lower surface of the aircraft to come in contact with the ground and spread its weight over a larger area thereby precluding chances if it sinking into the soil. Landing with gear down would make the aircraft to dig into the ground and cartwheel on its nose with disastrous results.
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Who ever is giving the thumbs down to the folks here who have answered the basic question correctly obviously have no aviation experience or knowledge of the subject. If it has retractable gear and your landing on soft ground leave em up.
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RE: Pecker H, I see undeserved negative ratings in this section all the time.
Its probably a frustrated pilot wannabe. To all answers above me. You are all correct so far. Ignore the thumbs down.
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There are people who just come through here every day and give every answer a thumbs down. I assume this is someone who can’t read, and doesn’t understand the questions and answers.
Land gear-up on soft ground.
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retired airline captain