The flight instructor was giving instruction in a Beech 76, a multiengine, retractable-landing gear-equipped airplane.
On the downwind leg in the pattern at the airport in Vacaville, California, he asked the pilot under instruction to perform a simulated single-engine emergency landing with the left engine shutdown.
It was the pilot under instruction’s first training flight in a multiengine airplane, and he asked a series of questions of the flight instructor during the procedure. The instructor reported that they both became distracted and forgot to extend the landing gear.
The airplane landed with the landing gear retracted and came to rest on the runway, sustaining substantial damage to the wingspar and longerons.
Probable cause: The pilot under instruction’s failure to extend the landing gear and the flight instructor’s inadequate supervision and failure to ensure that the landing gear was extended.
NTSB Identification: GAA18CA239
This April 2018 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.
As an instructor pilot, I always tell my students when doing critical flight manuevers, just follow me thru and we will discuss it in detail at altitude or on the ground.
One thing is for sure, the CFI will never do that again. Unfamiliar territory (if that were a factor) can be distracting. Given a proper level of judgment, intelligence and logic, nothing emphasizes success more than failure.
I don’t know what the level of experience was with this CFI. Obtaining a CFI ticket, like obtaining a Private, is like a license to learn. Having the ticket in your pocket doesn’t mean squat until you exercise the privilege for awhile. Some CFI’s do OK during that post-checkride, experience gaining period. Others don’t.
Looking back, I obtained my CFI when having less than 300 hours and 10 1/2 months total aviation experience time. It’s actually difficult to believe that a regulating agency would allow that little experience for the responsibility assumed. I learned a lot during that first year or two or three or four, etc. as a CFI. Knowing what I know now, I was severely under qualified by comparison. I was lucky.
If he/she were an experienced CFI, then that is a different matter…perhaps one that involved choosing the wrong profession.
How many excuses can you name for landing gear up in a retractable? Again, this is why insurance rates are MUCH HIGHER for retractable gear planes and why no one will insure you at all unless you log hundreds of hours with a CFI in one before even applying for said insurance.
OMG!, how was such a thing possible with a CFI on board and teaching a student?
Doing a simulated or real single engine procedure, whether air work or a landing REQUIRES ground instruction.
Dual flight is dangerous because trainee and instructor can both distract the other.
The BEECH DUCHESS BE 76 is a very easy airplane to fly. The fact it is so easy makes distractions even more likely.
Doing a simulated engine out landing on the first lesson is plain stupid.
Yes – when it is a training single engine approach, an engine shut down is a totally unnecessary risk. Feathering and restarting are part of multi-engine training, but do it at a safe altitude above the airport.