Successful 767 emergency landing in Warsaw today

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Seriosuly. An engine could have sheared off or caught and taken the plane for a spin.

I was once on a plane where they didnt have confirmation that the landing gear was in place. They downplayed it on the plane, but said to not be alarmed by all the firefighting stuff present.
 
Impressively smooth landing - looks like that's the way its supposed to be!

Great job by the pilot.
 
Seems like passenger aircraft/airliners should have a redundant landing gear system, like a manual crank to get the gear down. The flight engineer could then go down to the aircraft's bay area and lower the gear. Landing gear problems are critical and seem to occur enough to have such a system.
 
Originally Posted By: modularv8
Seems like passenger aircraft/airliners should have a redundant landing gear system, like a manual crank to get the gear down. The flight engineer could then go down to the aircraft's bay area and lower the gear. Landing gear problems are critical and seem to occur enough to have such a system.


+1. Should be a no-brainer.
 
Originally Posted By: modularv8
Seems like passenger aircraft/airliners should have a redundant landing gear system, like a manual crank to get the gear down. The flight engineer could then go down to the aircraft's bay area and lower the gear. Landing gear problems are critical and seem to occur enough to have such a system.


Just about every aircraft has a back up even a Cessna 172RG. If the uplock has failed, which I never heard of there's not a thing you can do (Im talking about the CRJ). You do know most aircraft you can't access the main landing gear once you reach the equipment bay right? So what could they do down there that they can't do in the flight deck.
 
Originally Posted By: Silver02ex
Originally Posted By: modularv8
Seems like passenger aircraft/airliners should have a redundant landing gear system, like a manual crank to get the gear down. The flight engineer could then go down to the aircraft's bay area and lower the gear. Landing gear problems are critical and seem to occur enough to have such a system.


Just about every aircraft has a back up even a Cessna 172RG. If the uplock has failed, which I never heard of there's not a thing you can do (Im talking about the CRJ). You do know most aircraft you can't access the main landing gear once you reach the equipment bay right? So what could they do down there that they can't do in the flight deck.


Pretty much what he said. The 737 has a manual extension system too, but if the uplock fails there isn't a darned thing we can do about it. Flight engineer? Don't have them anymore. Unless your flying on something built in the 50,60 or 70s.
smile.gif
 
From what I've read on other sites, the plane experienced failure of the central hydraulics system half hour after takeoff from Newark. I'm surprised they've decided to continue on at that point.

They attempted a backup/emergency landing gear release procedure, but it did not work. We'll need to wait for the results of an investigation before we'll find out why.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
From what I've read on other sites, the plane experienced failure of the central hydraulics system half hour after takeoff from Newark. I'm surprised they've decided to continue on at that point.

They attempted a backup/emergency landing gear release procedure, but it did not work. We'll need to wait for the results of an investigation before we'll find out why.


That depends... Does the manuals say. "land at the nearest suitable airport" or "no futher pilot action"
 
It's also not clear whether this particular 767 had the ability to dump fuel. If not, they'd have to fly around for hours to burn it all off, so maybe they just figured they might as well fly back to Warsaw on that fuel instead of circling around Newark.

But you're right, his manual must have told him how to proceed in this case.
 
Media is now saying (as much as you can trust media) that it was the captain's decision to continue on to Warsaw. Hard to judge whether right or wrong, but it was a decision he made.

If he decided to stick around Newark, he would have had to inform the passengers why he's doing it, or else they'd be wondering why they're not over the ocean. This means, people would be freaking out for 10 hours while he's burning off the fuel. Panic may have ensued.

The risky part was flying over the ocean knowing that the plane has a serious issue. If something else were to fail and he had to land on water prior to reaching Europe, they would have been SOL.

By the way, the guy became an instant national hero, similarly to captain Sully after landing in the Hudson.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
From what I've read on other sites, the plane experienced failure of the central hydraulics system half hour after takeoff from Newark. I'm surprised they've decided to continue on at that point.

They attempted a backup/emergency landing gear release procedure, but it did not work. We'll need to wait for the results of an investigation before we'll find out why.



The 757/767 series of aircraft has 3 Hydraulic systems and uses the Left hydraulic system for landing gear retraction and extension (the Right system will also pressurize the landing gear system through a Power Transfer unit, which still uses the left side hydraulic fluid). Losing the center system would have no effect on landing gear operation.

The ALTERNATE extension procedure simply releases the landing gear uplocks and allows the gear to "free fall" into place using gravity and slipstream airflow. There is no method to "hand crank" the system into place, that method went away in the 1970's.

A final point about landing with the gear up. Although I was not there, I believe it is highly unlikely that the airplance had a total gear failure, but rather the flight crew elected to land with all of the wheels up because of the greater risk of loss of aircraft directional stability with only a partial gear extension. I suspect they had a main gear problem only.

If faced with landing on one main and a nosegear, then I would always choose to land with the gear up to reduce the chance of ground looping the airplane.

One final point: there is no way to determine whether or not the landing gear has failed after takeoff (unless they won't retract), so to continue on seems like a perfectly normal response. If there was a hydraulic system failure of some sort, the checklist and fault reporting manuals would have provided a very detailed itemized list of available remaining systems and controls.

I had a nose gear extension problem going into Newark one night myself. In that case, the nose gear extended during the manual procedure and we landed without incident. Whenever an emergency is declared, the fire trucks are always standing by whether we need them or not.

Good discussion,

757 Guy
Delta Pilot, MSP
 
Originally Posted By: 757guy
The 757/767 series of aircraft has 3 Hydraulic systems and uses the Left hydraulic system for landing gear retraction and extension (the Right system will also pressurize the landing gear system through a Power Transfer unit, which still uses the left side hydraulic fluid). Losing the center system would have no effect on landing gear operation.

How would one interpret the table in section "2. DISTRIBUTION" in the following document?

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...qIA&cad=rjt

They make it seem like it's the Center system that's responsible for landing gear.


Similarly here, page 5.
 
Quattro Pete,

You are absolutely correct. The 767 Landing Gear is powered by the Center Hydraulic system. (I was quoting the 757 which uses the LEFT hydraulic system from memory and did not explain the 767 uses the CENTER system.)

I stand corrected.

Thanks for setting me straight!

757 Guy
 
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I agree with 757 guy that the pilot chose to land with no gear down rather than risk trying to land on one or two assemblies.

The fact that all of the gear doors were closed might indicate that they didn't want to attempt the landing with only one or two functioning gear.

Regardless of how the media discussed this landing, this was a incredibly dangerous and risky task. I'm often amazed at how well some pilots perform their job.
 
Originally Posted By: FowVay


Regardless of how the media discussed this landing, this was a incredibly dangerous and risky task. I'm often amazed at how well some pilots perform their job.


I agree totally. But, it seems landing gear failures are still a good percentage of incidents. I recall that amazing footage of a JetBlue aircraft with the faulty front gear. Something surely can/should be done.
 
That's one of my main beefs with the race to the bottom, and "a pilot is a pilot is a pilot" (or more close to home "an engineer").

99% of the time, or even more, things go routinely, and the world plays within the cushions, but that tiny fraction of a time, they pull off something miraculous.
 
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