231 down, no fatalities.

[Eight8Victor]

Glad to hear pilot and passenger are going to be OK.
 

https://www.walb.com/2021/05/20/plane-makes-crash-landing-so-ga/

[carusoam]

https://www.walb.com/2021/05/20/plane-makes-crash-landing-so-ga/
 

Alerting @mike_elliott (M20K from Florida, landed on a road in GA...)

Two people went to the hospital...

Best regards,

-a-

[Eight8Victor]

9514R

 

[carusoam]

https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N9514R
 

Thanks for the details...   88V!

Best regards,

-a-

[mike_elliott]

If anyone has any contact info on the pilot or knows more about their condition, please let me know.

Mike

 

[carusoam]

 

Cross referencing another thread for the same accident...

Best regards,

-a-

[c1tice]

Hope they will recover quickly.  Prayers. 
 

I am curious why he chose to not lower the gear other than an over-site due to stress. Any ideas on why one would not lower the gear?

[danad]

Registration pending - possible the pilot is new to the aircraft.

[A64Pilot]

12 hours ago, c1tice said:

Hope they will recover quickly.  Prayers. 
 

I am curious why he chose to not lower the gear other than an over-site due to stress. Any ideas on why one would not lower the gear?

Maybe he couldn’t make the road if he didn’t, maybe with gear down he would have been in the trees?

Pure speculation of course, but sometimes your better off gear up, ditching and muddy field comes to mind.

I wonder how many remember to pop the door prior to touchdown?

[Vance Harral]

Like all retract pilots, I've pondered the gear-up vs. gear-down ditching question from time to time.  The problem as I see it is that what many pilots think is an "obvious" positive or negative consequence of gear up vs. gear down is (1) not obvious if you start thinking more critically; and (2) there's no evidence in the actual data to support the "obvious" position.

As an example, everyone knows you should leave the gear up if you have to ditch in the water, right?  Otherwise the gear will catch, turn you upside down, and drown you?  Well, not so fast.  Leaving the gear up makes you more prone to catch a wingtip at first contact, which is a more severe impact event due to the ensuing side load (or in the worst case, cartwheel).  In fact, wing-first contact with the gear up is practically guaranteed if the water is anything other than smooth, at least in airplanes like Mooneys with relatively little dihedral.  Next, putting the gear down may or may not result in the airplane flipping, but the only study I'm aware of that actually tries to look at this concluded there's no measurable difference in survivability: see Myth #5 at https://www.nanaimoflyingclub.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/EQUIPPED-TO-SURVIVE-tm-Ditching-Myths-Torpedoed.pdf.  Note also in that study that there's no meaningful variation in survivability for high- vs. low-wing, or fixed vs. retract.

More generally, I think a lot of retractable gear pilots have this idea that gear down "catches" anything other than a smooth paved surface, resulting in a high-G stop; and gear up is safer because you'll "slide" on that same surface with a lower-G stop.  I'm unconvinced.  It's equally likely a gear-down landing on rough terrain will simply tear the gear off the airplane during the impact sequence, fortuitously absorbing some of the impact force while allowing the cabin to continue moving forward; and/or that trying to "belly it in" on water/mud/whatever actually winds up with a worse sudden stoppage than gear down due to catching a wingtip or whatever.

We all have to make our own decisions (ideally ahead of time), and I don't think there are clearly right or wrong answers.  But I think about this stuff every time I see someone question another pilot's decision about gear-up vs. gear-down in an off-field landing.