The pilot told investigators that during the landing flare at the airport in Valdosta, Georgia, he realized that he forgot to extend the Beech A36’s landing gear and determined it was too late to go around.
The underside of the airplane’s fuselage settled onto the runway and skidded down the asphalt, resulting in substantial damage to the structure of the fuselage.
The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions that would have prevented normal operation of the airplane.
The airplane was equipped with a landing gear position warning horn that was designed to sound when the throttle lever was pulled back for landing. The pilot reported that he did not specifically remember hearing the warning horn during the landing flare. However, he added he might have mistaken the landing gear warning horn for the stall warning horn as he was expecting to hear the stall warning during the landing flare.
The pilot told investigators that when he went back to the airplane after the accident and powered up the airplane’s electrical system, the landing gear warning horn operated normally.
Probable Cause: The pilot’s failure to extend the landing gear before landing.
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This November 2023 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.
When I get established on final, I always do GUMPS check again to be sure this doesn’t happen.
Horns, buzzers and lights area all good.
Does anyone ever look at their Airspeed on final? With gear up, if they have gotten the speed right in most retractable singles then the pitch and power is all wrong? Usually they are over their normal landing speed.
It should be automatic for a natural-born, professional aviator to check four or five times that the gear is down before landing. Not only check to see, but verbalize “Three green.” Checklists exist for a reason. There are no excuses.
I would again ask/suggest that an “audio simulator” smartphone app(lication) be created that would play the sounds of the “Stall Warning”, “Landing Gear Unsafe”, and other aural Warnings and Alerts. Such an app could be used by pilots for their own recurrent training, and by Flight Instructor’s to test for a student’s knowledge and recognition of these sounds.
I hate to say this about a pilot with as much time in type and other complex aircraft, but this was a case of expectation bias. He expected to hear an aural warning and took this as the the stall horn and failed to recognize this as the gear horn.
Doing a GUMP[s] check on short final regardless of fixed or retract or floats will keep one from such a mistake.
Skyway hypnosis?
I don’t know what can be said about this, other than the old saw.