The plane was fighting the wind as it came in and never lowered it’s gear. Hit the runway and slid all the way to the end of the runway into the fence. I was surprised, it went further down the runway on it’s belly than on it’s wheels. (I suppose brakes cause more friction than smooth aluminum.)
No one was hurt. The Pilot claimed he was so worried and distracted by the crosswind that he forgot about the landing gear.
This is the 5th accident here in 3 weeks associated with our unusual high winds. 3 crashes, unfortunately, resulted in fatalities.
I’ve never been witness to a fatal crash, despite working at an airport for close to 10 years, thank God for small favors. I have seen a couple of gear up landings, both Baron drivers that for whatever reason simply forgot to extend the landing gear. The sound of propellers hitting concrete is very loud.
And I got to watch as a friend had the NLG of his Merlin II snap away on landing. I reached the airplane before the fire crews did.
And I lost a friend to an off airport crash when he took off in his V-35 with his fuel selector set to a tank that only had about 6 min’s worth of fuel in it.
In a seperate incident, I’ve had to quarantine my FBO’s avgas trucks for inspection and go deal with an aircraft owner’s hysterical wife.
I’ve lost a coworker to a bird strike while he was giving a lesson; leaving behind a wife and infant.
It sucks, but it happens, and it’ll keep happening without regard to any practices we put in place to try to minimize it. Currently, all we can do is minimize incidents and injury; it’s unfortunate, but crashes will continue to happen, pilots will continue to make an erroneous judgment or just have brain farts.
Training, intimacy with the airplane, and discipline with regards to obeying the checklists is the only thing I can think of that will help abate the disasters.