Two pilots have been suspended from duty after their aircraft, carrying 99 passengers, nearly ran out of fuel because they forgot to retract the landing gear after take-off.

Air India Flight AI676 was en route to Mumbai from Kolkata on July 22 but was forced to divert to Nagpur when the crew became alarmed by the speed at which the aircraft was losing fuel thanks to the additional drag created by the extended wheels.

An unidentified source told the Times of India that the “brand new Airbus A320”, one of the most fuel efficient aircraft in existence, had struggled to climb after take-off, prompting the pilots to settle on an altitude of 24,000 feet as opposed to a usual cruising height of 35,000 feet. The source, who made a point of saying that both pilots were women, said it flew like this at 230 knots - as opposed to around 500 knots - for about an hour-and-a-half, while the extended landing gear dragged heavily on the aircraft.

At this point, 90 minutes into a two-and-a-half-hour flight, the crew requested permission to divert to Nagpur as their fuel would have run out before reaching Mumbai.

Link

They are extremely lucky the gear didn't break.

Yet another example of incompetent foreign airline pilots who think an airplane is just another video game and don't really know how to fly.

So.... 2 women pilots, have to remember to avoid those flights.

Women drivers....

Did you ever hear the one about the two women pilots in the cockpit...?

Hoo boy

Incompetence, compounded and squared

EVERY pilot does this ONCE.

But 99.9% of the time it is during their first few hours of flying a retractable gear aircraft.

We had a pilot do it in FA-18s, unfortunately when his wingman said "Your gear is still down", he immediately pushed the gear handle to UP. Which exceeded gear retraction speed... Nothing bad happened, but it required multiple gear inspections to confirm everything was ok.

MX was REALLY happy with him, especially since they were in Key West... all that liberty time lost to a stupid mistake... BUT the MX Officer made the pilot stay and help.

Hmm. I would think landing gear retraction would be an automatic function. Why is it manual?

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Hmm. I would think landing gear retraction would be an automatic function. Why is it manual?

Some planes have automatic flap retraction at a certain speed - but if the gear are raised when going too fast or with some AOB / G on the plane, it can damage the aircraft.

Maybe the wonderBus needs another aural caution - "The Landing Gear are STILL down, the Landing Gear are STILL down..."

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Hmm. I would think landing gear retraction would be an automatic function. Why is it manual?

This is why there are checklists.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Hmm. I would think landing gear retraction would be an automatic function. Why is it manual?

Some planes have automatic flap retraction at a certain speed - but if the gear are raised when going too fast or with some AOB / G on the plane, it can damage the aircraft.

Maybe the wonderBus needs another aural caution - "The Landing Gear are STILL down, the Landing Gear are STILL down..."

Got it.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Hmm. I would think landing gear retraction would be an automatic function. Why is it manual?

Nothing could possibly go wrong.


On another note, they should have been using checklists.

I think entropy is an Airbus driver. He can probably tell us whether the checklists are on a display screen, and whether checklist items have to be acknowledged in order for them to be dismissed from the screen.

quote:

Maybe the wonderBus needs another aural caution - "The Landing Gear are STILL down, the Landing Gear are STILL down..."

Shouldn't it also remind you to slow down to a safe retraction speed?

"Retard. The landing gear is down".

"OHNO! NUTGUDE! NUTGUDE!!!

Of course, when expected performance standards aren't being realized, you look around for why.

To let this go for 90 minutes without catching it is hard to imagine.

Things happen. If you are preparing to land, and you are having trouble getting to pattern speeds, maybe you need to look around and see why.

Same with take off. There are speeds and climb rates and power settings. If those aren't realized, there is a reason.

I would think when you noticed the fuel/speed/altitude problems you might run through issues that could cause that.

See if you could rectify the situation.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:

quote:

Maybe the wonderBus needs another aural caution - "The Landing Gear are STILL down, the Landing Gear are STILL down..."

Shouldn't it also remind you to slow down to a safe retraction speed?

"Retard. The landing gear is down".

Or the every popular "You are SOOO stupid, just roll inverted and pull until ground impact".

Maybe 30 years ago, I had a check ride with an examiner to renew my multi-engine instructor certificate.

This particular examiner was a crusty retired PanAm captain. We spent a lot of time discussing the proper gear retraction procedure. His mandate was, absent any instructions to the contrary in the POH (Pilot's Operating Handbook) for the particular make / model of airplane, the generic time to retract landing gear after takeoff was "blue line plus ten."

Blue line is a blue marking on the airspeed indicator that shows the best rate of climb airspeed in the event of the critical engine failing immediately after takeoff, so The Captain wanted gear retraction to be initiated as soon as we were ten knots faster than blue line speed. This was typically a few seconds after becoming airborn.

So Bitchin' Betty didn't mention it?