“He had to be a super good pilot.”

"It’s likely that the plane will need significant repairs before becoming ready for flight again."

"It’s also likely that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will have to complete an investigation of the incident before the pilot is authorized to fly again."

The gear comes down with a *thunk* as soon as you use use even a pinky finger to reach down and disconnect the electric jack screw, and the handle is almost a formality to lock it down.

No cell phones were working either.

The "bad luck" of having simultaneous mechanical landing gear failure, cell phone failure, total and sudden electrical failure and possibly an ammeter failure to boot. All at once.

Imagine.

WTF??????

Wow

This scares me. I usually have a go to hell plan. But, what happens when your go to hell plan goes to hell ?

Maybe Comm radio x 2 + Portable Yaesu(Vertex) or Icom hand held + Cell Phone + My VHF/UHF ham rado handheld + two hard core hi output LED colored flash lights to signal the tower ??

So, what do you have for comm back ups to back ups to back ups? Flying Fixed Gear would have solved half the problems I suppose.

There is an old quotation by Robert Burns

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry definition
No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it. The saying is adapted from a line in “To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns : “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.”

Also, from an old Star Trek episode titled " Peak Performance"
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Peak_Performance_%28episode%29

Captain Picard makes a most memorable comment that I have never forgotten:

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life."
- Jean-Luc Picard

I am glad the pilot of the 1959 model year Piper Commanche and his wife were able to walk away with no injuries.

According to the article that Comanche is capable of flying at the amazing speed of 135mph!! I can't even think that fast.

I wonder if he ever actually read the POH for that thing? Wonder if he's ever had a Flight Review in that airplane? I can't believe he's never actually performed an emergency gear extension.

Maybe he should be grounded, at least till someone pulls his head out of his butt.....

Something failed, alright, but it wasn't that airplane.

MTV

And, blazing along at that blistering 135 MPH, maybe he should have used that iPad to Google how to manually extend his gear.

Gump

Those are good airplanes.

My old CFI...also A&P...made me do the emergency gear extension then he would hook it back up while still in the air. He said they were prone to nose gear collapse if you extended manually and went ahead and landed it if the system had any bushing slack whatsoever. I took him at his word and we did more than once.

Don't know what happened in this case, but I am going to cut the dude some slack. Looks like he had plenty of things going wrong. Could have turned out much worse than a gear-up.

I guess anyone flying a J3 is in a full-blown emergency anytime they're airborne.

GumpAir wrote:And, blazing along at that blistering 135 MPH, maybe he should have used that iPad to Google how to manually extend his gear.

Gump

And possibly a wikipedia briefing on circuit breakers?

That article title is everything I hate about news media and aviation.

Recipe for viral article:

1 buzzword
1 hot technology
1 situation that appeals to the everyman
1 skill or discipline that few people know much about and seems possible that it could be solved magically by the hot technology.

Optional: a celebrity or pet.

Combine in any order to confuse and misdirect.

Seems to me the one who was confused and misdirected was the alleged PIC.

MTV

C'mon guys. The real reason he crash landed was because he hadn't filed a FAA flight plan with Air Traffic Control

mtv wrote:Seems to me the one who was confused and misdirected was the alleged PIC.

MTV

It would appear that way, but the article puffs it up to make it sound like he used his iPad to hack his way out the emergency.

Zzz wrote:

mtv wrote:Seems to me the one who was confused and misdirected was the alleged PIC.

MTV

It would appear that way, but the article puffs it up to make it sound like he used his iPad to hack his way out the emergency.

I know, I know, and I agree....just couldn't help but get in one more jab....

MTV

Children of the magenta line

Oy Vey. Unfortunately, that wasn't even the worst article on this episode. Check this one out, which adds the excitement of engine failure to the mix:

http://www.cnet.com/news/pilot-and-wife ... m-failure/

When I was in Junior High, my social studies teacher drummed into us how important the 4th Estate is to the freedoms and liberties we enjoy. But one has to wonder. If they can't begin to get the facts straight on airplane incidents like this one, or bodies floating in the French Quarter, how useful are they? Do they really contribute to our freedoms and liberties? Really?

Cary

Cary wrote:Do they really contribute to our freedoms and liberties? Really?

Do you really count Fox News as part of the Fourth Estate?

I doubt very much that the NTSB report will resemble anything the Fox News article had in it. It might, however, reflect what the other reports indicated (that the pilot wasn't aware that a *manual* gear extension doesn't require power, or that the power failure was gradual and not sudden).

I'm patient.

Well, Dam, He had a complete power failure and did not catch it until he was screwed and the batterys in his flashlight were out, and yes he f--ked up and did not know how or was unable to get the gear down? 80 miles in the dark with no panel HMMMM betcha his were tucked up pretty tight! 1/2 an hour in the dark trying to keep it in the air and find an airport HMMMM,
Shit would have it been better to have had them bore it into the ground somewhere, Tough crowd around here!
Yep they screwed the pooch, and they ruined a good airplane!! And they walked away from it because they both had an I pad!!
Dam Ipad!! Might have been the only thing that saved there dum asses!!
Sure glad I have never found out the alternator was toast when the radio quit working and the dam flaash light didn't work or what ever,