There are similar (but more basic) systems built into some retractable gear aircraft. They generally provide an audible alert if the plane appears about to land but the gear is still up.
Pilots still land gear up, even with the alarm sounding. There is (or at least was) even a public (YouTube) video of this happening from a passenger filming.
Landing a plane is not difficult (source: I’m a pilot) but there’s a lot going on. This is clearly a UI/UX issue but innovation is relatively slow in the certified market.
Pure speculation on my part, but on a first flight when you're shaking out the fundamentals, it's safer to not retract landing gear in case there is a catastrophic failure in, say, your hydraulic system.
For the first test flight of an aircraft, it's quite common to test a very limited set of parts of the aircraft, and retracting the gear might not be on that list. Also, if the gear is left down, then that's one less thing that could go wrong while the pilot is still getting used to an aircraft with a very different feel to anything they have flown before.
I think you touch on what might be an easier example to demonstrate with here:
"GEAR NOT DOWN"
So the plane has determined you are close to the ground, but the landing gear is not extended.
What is the proper course of action?
If you're trying to land on a runway or other normal surface (i.e., 99 cases out of a hundred type of thing) the appropriate action would be to extend the landing gear.
In that other case though, extending the landing gear in preparation for something like an emergency water landing is certain to take something which has a surprisingly good survival rate and turn it into a mass casualty event.
So we're left with the choice between "do the usual thing automatically, and rely on the pilot to remember to override it in the rare event of an emergency" or "alert the pilot and rely on them to evaluate whether it's the right thing for their current situation and conditions".
I would definitely argue for the latter. Especially in this specific example increasing cognitive load during exceptional situations to make the unexceptional more convenient is probably not what we want to do. The plane is not aware of the actual situation the plane is in. The pilot is.
No, I'm pretty sure lowering the landing gear can change the aerodynamic properties of an aircraft pretty significantly. You wouldn't ever want that to happen unexpectedly.
This is absolutely the case. Both in cases where the gear is semi-functional, and when it is not functional at all. For reference, here is what a belly landing looks like on a 767:
They're swiveling landing gear is pretty cool, although it does look unsettling when a plane on the ground isn't moving the same way its nose is pointing e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94AcSHpcZbI&t=39
Pilots really push back against this kind of safety feature. They want 100% control of their vehicles, including the ability to lift the landing gear while on the ground, because the risk of equipment failure that cannot be manually overridden is high.
I don't fly retractable gear aircraft, but I did spend several months exclusively flying a Citabria. On my first flight back in a more typical Cessna 172, I went through the downwind, base, and final legs as usual.
After landing and getting the plane stopped, I turned to my instructor and commented that the landing sight picture seemed a lot steeper than what I had remembered.
He smiled and pointed to the flap switch, which I had completely forgotten about. The Citabria doesn't have flaps.
There have been several cases of the landing gear up/down lever getting wired backwards during maintenance. Not to worry, the gear has a 'squat switch' sensor that prevents the gear from being raised when the plane is on the ground. Unless you taxi over a bump and the switch decides it's now airborne. Crunch.
The reality is that it doesn't really matter. Landing gear-up is almost always survivable - for the people at least :-)
Distracting someone with trying to find and operate the landing gear would probably be as likely to cause problems as it would be to help.
reply