six gear collapses & gear ups in one week

[Mooney in Oz]

On 12/22/2020 at 2:31 PM, PT20J said:

It had a Johnson bar.

A little off topic, but the Boeing 707 also has a Johnson bar to manually extend only its nose gear in the event of a gear extension failure. 

[philiplane]

A Mooney M20E geared up in Glendale AZ yesterday, 12-27-2020.

Good thing there are only three days left in 2020.

Edited December 29, 2020 by philiplane

[jlunseth]

Anybody keeping track of how many that is for the year?

 

[0TreeLemur]

On 12/24/2020 at 11:04 AM, Mooney in Oz said:

A little off topic, but the Boeing 707 also has a Johnson bar to manually extend only its nose gear in the event of a gear extension failure. 

Going a bit further off topic, the Johnson bar got its name from a big steel lever arm used in steam locomotives to turn the main steam pressure valve.   You can speculate about where the name "Johnson" came from. 

Ok, back to the depressing discussion about GU landings.

[philiplane]

I originally guessed we would see 60 Mooney gear ups based on the rate through the first half of the year. Will have to see what the current tally is. 

60 x $38K per event is $2.3 million in damage, at a minimum. That's a lot of insurance $$$$

Edited December 30, 2020 by philiplane

[philiplane]

Bringing the year to a close, a Mooney M20K lost power on takeoff, and ran off the end of the runway 12/27/20 in Pullman WA, and an Acclaim slid off the end of the runway and struck a lawn mower in Holly Ridge NC on 12/30/20. 

Let's hope that no more incidents happen on this last day of the year.

[jlunseth]

I just wanted to say I think it is a real service to keep this thread going. Frankly, the thing mostly likely to prevent gear ups is not alerts, or technology, or even checklists and flows, it is having a deathly fear of ever gearing up so you never take gear deployment for granted. Having this thread around reminds us constantly, which is needed.

[Hank]

2 hours ago, philiplane said:

Bringing the year to a close, a Mooney M20K lost power on takeoff, and ran off the end of the runway 12/27/20 in Pullman WA, and an Acclaim slid off the end of the runway and struck a lawn mower in Holly Ridge NC on 12/30/20. 

Let's hope that no more incidents happen on this last day of the year.

He's a brave soul taking an Acclaim into Holly Ridge. 3500', grass, obstructed and displaced landing towards the ocean (14?).

Or was he at the nearby private, paved field???

Edited December 31, 2020 by Hank

[0TreeLemur]

On 12/29/2020 at 6:40 PM, philiplane said:

I originally guessed we would see 60 Mooney gear ups based on the rate through the first half of the year. Will have to see what the current tally is. 

60 x $38K per event is $2.3 million in damage, at a minimum. That's a lot of insurance $$$$

The MSC that did my 2020 annual asked me how much hull insurance I carried.   After I answered, he told me that his average bill to an insurance company for repairs after a g.u. landing neared $50k, and recommended that I increase my hull coverage, which I did.

[kortopates]

1 hour ago, 0TreeLemur said:

The MSC that did my 2020 annual asked me how much hull insurance I carried.   After I answered, he told me that his average bill to an insurance company for repairs after a g.u. landing close to $50k, and recommended he increase my hull coverage, which I did.

Yep, most vintage Mooney's are totaled by insurance from a gear up despite no structural damage. Make sure you also consider that the maximum payout for repairs that an insurance company will pay is around 70% of your hull value. That's based on the recognition that the insurance company will get back the salvage value of you bird when they auction it for salvage. I've been told on average they get back around 30% of the aircraft. So any repair that exceeds your hull coverage minus their estimated salvage value its going to be cheaper for them to cut a check for your insured hull value. That becomes even more likely when the aircraft is underinsured. Say for example it has some nice high value avionics and the insurance company recognizes they'll do much better than average in salvage value when they auction it.  If the aircraft is over insured it works the opposite way and the insurance company may well want to pay for repairs when the owner feels they may well prefer to go shopping for another airplane.

Edited January 2, 2021 by kortopates

[skykrawler]

Is this one of those Johnson Bar models?  1969

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2021/01/mooney-m20e-n9253v-incidents-occurred.html

Two incidents in less than a year? 

 

[Hank]

11 minutes ago, skykrawler said:

Two incidents in less than a year?

Eighteen months. July 19 and Dec 20 / Jan 21. Truly a depressing thought. But I've read here about one intrepid owner in the 80s or 90s who did it three times back-to-back . . . 

Edited January 5, 2021 by Hank

[kortopates]

This thread has been quiet as of late, but not Mooney's having incindents. So far in March, we’ve had a C and a J gear up landing,  plus a K model that  "PRIOR TO LIFT, LOST ENGINE POWER AND SLID INTO THE MUD" - but no injuies in any of these.

[MooneyMitch]

I peruse this thread regularly hoping to never see me in it !!!

[Hank]

6 hours ago, kortopates said:

This thread has been quiet as of late, but not Mooney's having incindents. So far in March, we’ve had a C and a J gear up landing,  plus a K model that  "PRIOR TO LIFT, LOST ENGINE POWER AND SLID INTO THE MUD" - but no injuies in any of these.

This is the important part! Three incidents / accidents and zero injuries! I love my Mooney . . . . A chute wouldn't have helped any of these . . . . 

[FlyingDude]

On 5/12/2020 at 9:30 PM, Hector said:

I have my Garmin GPS set to give me a 500 feet alert on the intercom. I made it a habit to call out ‘landing gear down’ out loud when I get the 500 feet alert as a last reminder I case I miss it well before that.

How do you program that? Thanks

[FlyingDude]

On 12/13/2020 at 6:27 PM, cliffy said:

I know of one  Mooney that has geared up 3 times and only 1 made to the log book

All 3 by the same pilot. 

How's that possible? The pilot paid for the repair and the AP just didn't log it????

[gsxrpilot]

24 minutes ago, 1980Mooney said:

Who is hovering over A&Ps to make sure that they log everything completely and right?  The owner probably wishes it never happened - he may not have filed an insurance claim in an effort to cover it up with cash - and may be complicit.  It's all self policed.

If it wasn't logged, did it really happen 

[cliffy]

44 minutes ago, FlyingDude said:

How's that possible? The pilot paid for the repair and the AP just didn't log it????

Found it out by listening to the owners son talking about it. When  I saw it they had a problem in a local shop where it had come in because of the gear  and it had a recent  annual (by another shop) and the gear wouldn't suck into the wheel wells all the way. And I mean by a considerable margin 3-4 inches short. Another A&P signed it off at the annual! Turns out on the last unrecorded gear up the owner fixed it himself and put in the wrong gear motor. I went so far as to call another MSC that I know and we talked about it and couldn't come up with a way to make the installation legal. 

I didn't want to get involved with it so I told the son to take it to another shop to sort it all out. The son  braced the gear down, got a ferry permit and flew it away.

[larrynimmo]

Yet another gear up landing in Chesapeake Virginia airport....reported today on facebook

[A64Pilot]

On 4/2/2021 at 10:00 AM, 1980Mooney said:

Who is hovering over A&Ps to make sure that they log everything completely and right?  The owner probably wishes it never happened - he may not have filed an insurance claim in an effort to cover it up with cash - and may be complicit.  It's all self policed.

The Federal Government, make a complaint, I can assure you the FAA will investigate, they take a acquisition like that extremely seriously.

To heck with your livelihood, it’s Prison time to do what you suggest. Not saying it’s not done, but only a stupid person would do what you suggest. Huge, tremendous risk, and what’s the reward? What’s the motivation?

‘I know some Dr’s have sold drugs so there are stupid people out there, but surely they are few and far in between.

‘From my life in Aviation maintenance, 99% of the time it’s the aircraft owner that doing the unreported maintenance, because of course they can’t log it.

‘One of the things I tell people that most scoff at, is don’t be afraid of damage history, even serious damage if it was professionally done is fine.

Instead be afraid of what’s not in the book.

‘I’ve had an aircraft broker, one of our dealers at the time take a razor blade and remove a log book page in front of me, he thought so little of me seeing that I guess, one slice and what was in the book is gone.

‘I’ve asked myself why logbook pages aren’t numbered and can’t come up with an answer.

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by A64Pilot

[PT20J]

Most everyone keeps complete aircraft maintenance logbooks for the life of the aircraft. But, FARs don't require that. Depending on the extent of the damage and the nature of the repairs, it can be legal to have three gear ups with only the last one in the current maintenance record.  Part 91.417(b)(1) states that

The records specified in paragraph (a)(1) of this section shall be retained until the work is repeated or superseded by other work or for one year after the work is performed.

Skip

[Ricky_231]

On 4/2/2021 at 9:21 AM, FlyingDude said:

How do you program that? Thanks

Foreflight calls out "500" for me - but would love to have it programmed on the GPS. Can the 430w do that?

[A64Pilot]

12 hours ago, PT20J said:

Most everyone keeps complete aircraft maintenance logbooks for the life of the aircraft. But, FARs don't require that. Depending on the extent of the damage and the nature of the repairs, it can be legal to have three gear ups with only the last one in the current maintenance record.  Part 91.417(b)(1) states that

The records specified in paragraph (a)(1) of this section shall be retained until the work is repeated or superseded by other work or for one year after the work is performed.

Skip

However there is a section 2 of items required to be kept indefinitely. So unless several different log books are kept, how do you go about removing items from the logbook that are over 1 year old? Razor blade?

I bet if your caught doing  that I bet there is some kind of FAR about tampering with records that will get you.

‘The devil is in the detail with FAR’s. you can find many that make a statement, but don’t state there are exceptions, however exceptions exits, like the 500’ rule, which if memory serves states that helicopters are exempt, but doesn’t say anything about Ag planes, but in FAR 137 Ag planes are exempt. Same with carriage of the Airworthiness Certificate, all aircraft except an Ag plane are required to carry the original, an Ag plane isn’t, but you have to go to part 137 to find that exemption

Its my belief that the requirement of maintenance of records for one year is meant to mean work orders etc, not the logbook. But as I’m no aviation lawyer, my belief and $2 may get you a cup of coffee.

Edited July 13, 2021 by A64Pilot

[A64Pilot]

Just now, Ricky_231 said:

Foreflight calls out "500" for me - but would love to have it programmed on the GPS. Can the 430w do that?

My 430 gives me a terrain alert coming into my home airfield as it’s not in the database, but I believe it doesn’t for airports in the database, but I agree a “check wheels down” would be a good alert to be able to enable.