Forgetful trainer pilot lands plane with wheels up

New Delhi: The pilot of a trainer aircraft on Monday reportedly ‘forgot’ to lower the landing gear before touching down at the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi (IGRUA) in Rae Bareli’s Fursatganj. The aircraft, a French-made single-engine Trinidad TB 20, made a “wheels-up landing” on its belly and got damaged substantially. Luckily though, the trainer and the student he was teaching how to fly survived this mishap.
An aviation ministry spokesperson confirmed the incident and said that the DGCA is probing the same. IGRUA director Air marshal (retd) V K Verma said that the cause will be known only after the probe and added that forgetting to lower landing gear is known to have happened across the world. “There have been several such mishaps in aviation industry, even in the best of air forces. Pilots may get so preoccupied with some other work that they may forget to lower the undercarriage. The focus may be elsewhere. Therefore aircraft have warnings to remind pilots to lower the undercarriage. Sometimes even these warnings are ignored and blunders have happened,” Verma told TOI.
17/06/10 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2010, Safety Jun 2010