Landing Gear Fault on Virgin Aircraft

Can't fly above a certain speed with the undercart down otherwise you'll start ripping the undercart fairing panels off of the aircraft. You also have to take into account where Virgin Atlantic have their main maintenance facilities and I would assume that those are in the UK.
 
Acme said:
Why would they come back and perform the emergency landing?

Why not continue to the destination and do it there, if the only issue is the landing gear?

Either way you have to perform an emergency landing, and with the latter option, the passengers all arrive!
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With the gear stuck like that creating extra drag it wouldn't have had the fuel to make it.
 
Acme said:
Why would they come back and perform the emergency landing?

Why not continue to the destination and do it there, if the only issue is the landing gear?

Either way you have to perform an emergency landing, and with the latter option, the passengers all arrive!
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For doing a non-standard landing, the pilot will want to be coming into a 'decent' airport with good facilities and well trained emergency personnel. Whilst the planned destination of Los Angeles is okay, what if there's some other problem mid-flight (airspace closed, engine fault, etc) and the plane gets diverted... to a not so well equipped airport in Bongoland.
 
All came down home safely. Thats good news.
Did the initial bump on landing get the left carriage to fully drop, or did they manage to get it back down?
The picture i saw showed the left halfway down, was it able to go fully back down, but not able to come right up? Thus the landing was normal, but on gear that wouldn't come right up?
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
All came down home safely. Thats good news.
Did the initial bump on landing get the left carriage to fully drop, or did they manage to get it back down?
The picture i saw showed the left halfway down, was it able to go fully back down, but not able to come right up? Thus the landing was normal, but on gear that wouldn't come right up?
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It's designed to be at that angle.
1010714.jpg

(Not the plane in question, but another 747)
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
All came down home safely. Thats good news.
Did the initial bump on landing get the left carriage to fully drop, or did they manage to get it back down?
The picture i saw showed the left halfway down, was it able to go fully back down, but not able to come right up? Thus the landing was normal, but on gear that wouldn't come right up?
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Judging by pics I've seen of it on the runway the rear RH still didn't come down as the plane is sitting at an odd angle, right wind sitting a lot closer to the runway than the left.

I stand corrected on the undercart speed thing too. Max VLE is 320kts (blame the net if this figure is wrong) so it could fly along quite happily but someone hit the nail on the head with the drag / fuel burn comment. It'd need a whole lot more thrust to push it along.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Ah, textbook landing with three sets of wheels instead of four.
Runway shut still, everyone will be late.
Bit surprised they haven't pulled the beasty to one side.
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I'd think they'd full unload it to make it as light as possible before moving it anywhere to reduce the load on the undercarriage that is down.
 
Acme said:
Why would they come back and perform the emergency landing?

Why not continue to the destination and do it there, if the only issue is the landing gear?

Either way you have to perform an emergency landing, and with the latter option, the passengers all arrive!
Click to expand...

Max flight speed with gear down for a 747 is 320 knots, so you're looking at nearly doubling flight time to Las Vegas in an unstable airframe and running out of fuel over the East Coast of the USA.

As things tend to fail in twos or threes, once you have a serious malfunction such as a landing gear failure, you land that plane ASAP.
 
Terminal_Boy said:
Max flight speed with gear down for a 747 is 320 knots, so you're looking at nearly doubling flight time to Las Vegas in an unstable airframe and running out of fuel over the East Coast of the USA.

As things tend to fail in twos or threes, once you have a serious malfunction such as a landing gear failure, you land that plane ASAP.
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Max VLE is 320knots / 0.82M so it wouldn't take much longer as I think they cruise around the 0.86M region, it'd just burn a shed load more fuel trying to sustain that speed as you say :D It'd also be a very noisy flight for the passengers as the engines would be spooled up much more than usual.
 
That was rubbish, this is how you land a plane with no undercarriage


Elevator_Car_2_zps978ee88c.jpg



Should have called in the Thunderbirds, they have High-Speed Elevator Cars :cool:
 
Hard to tell from the photos but it looks like the gear got stuck on its own door somehow, I'm assuming it got damaged when it was being retracted because it's designed so the gear can drop into position.

Just got to wait for the report I guess.
 
Nice landing.

Talk about pressure.

pilot must be one of the only jobs that can go from routine to terror in seconds.
 
Gixer said:
Max VLE is 320knots / 0.82M so it wouldn't take much longer as I think they cruise around the 0.86M region, it'd just burn a shed load more fuel trying to sustain that speed as you say :D It'd also be a very noisy flight for the passengers as the engines would be spooled up much more than usual.
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Isn't 320 knots 0.5M, and hence way slower than the normal crushing speed?
 
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