News video from WCVB in Boston shows a Cape Air Cessna 402C making a textbook emergency landing at Boston Logan International Airport (KBOS) yesterday (September 17). Cape Air Flight 1833 was bound for Bar Harbor, Maine, but reported a “gear issue” shortly after takeoff at around 2:22 pm EDT. The piston twin remained airborne for a bit more than an hour before initiating the emergency landing on Runway 22L at 3:20 pm.
So I would be most interested in the views of other pilots. When faced with only a partial gear failure, would you elect to land with the gear partially out, or fully retracted?
I would slow the aircraft, put the gear up if possible, remove all power electrical/hydraulic from the system, put the switch down, and lower the gear via the manual system. If a main didn’t come down, land with what you got all the way to the side of the runway with the good gear.
I’ve flown many different types of retractable gear aircraft from Cutlass/Arrow to Apache/C-421 to Phantom/Aardvark. The AFM direction varies widely about what to do, so there is no “rule of thumb” answer – you need to read the flight manual for what you’re flying and then do what it says.
Probably one of the many flights they list as being in a new Technam and when you show up you are crammed into a ancient decrepit cessna from 1961 that should have been turned into soda cans twenty years ago, CapeAir’s standard class of service.