The pilot of the retractable-gear Piper PA-28R reported that, during a simulated engine-out landing with a flight instructor, they forgot to extend the landing gear.
The airplane landed at the airport in Bowling Green, Ohio, with the gear retracted.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause: The pilot’s and flight instructor’s failure to extend the landing gear.
NTSB Identification: GAA17CA425
This July 2017 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
Don’t PA-28R’s have automatic gear retraction/lowering? Their’s an air probe mounted on the port side of the fuselage, that retracts the gear @80kts/Full-Throttle & lowers the gear @91kts/throttle lowered below half-way, from what I read/remember.
Not all have it — and that is also true of the Lance. I think all the retractable Saratogas have it.
There was a modification, as I recall, to disable it permanently for those that wanted it back where there was some lawsuit about it being the cause of a crash.
If you are like me, you will lock it out before take-off. Why would you do this? If you don’t and your engine has a problem at, say, 50′ AGL, so you select gear up so you can climb a bit, that sucker will not retract the gear and you will not climb, you may even sink right into that obstacle you need to clear. The same thing happens and is in the book, to lock it out when you are doing a Vy climb, because it won’t retract completely, if at all.
Or, you are departing at High DA where the engine can only produce, at max, 70% power. If you do not remember to lock out the system, you may not be able to generate the airflow over that mast after rotation so that it will let the the gear retract. So now your climb rate is really sucky.
Then you may run into what I did. There is a hole worn into the diaphragm, and it won’t retract even though you are making 100% power and you have the airflow to allow the system to otherwise retract the gear.
These are just a few reasons why it would not work by being locked out.
Isn’t the instructor there to make sure that the pilot performs the maneuver properly and safely? Sounds like he was more of a passenger on that flight. I do wonder if this was a career flight instructor or just some kid working off the time to qualify for an airline job which is all to often the case these days.
I think you nailed it.