I am not a real world pilot and so my curiosity is peaked by the preference to land with any available portion of the landing gear extended verses none of the gear extended. It seems to me that one would not willingly attempt to land an aircraft of this size with only the right or the left gear extended because of the danger of dragging the opposite wing and the tremendous potential for significant damage and injury. Wouldn't it be better to bring the partially extended gear back up, if possible, foam the runway and then attempt to land the aircraft in that (to me anyway) more stable configuration?

Landing without any gear is the least stable configuration.In one of the videos you can see how the 767 starts turning to the right at a very low speed just before stopping.Without any landing gear you have almost no directional control of the airplane and even a slight crosswind component would turn the plane off the runway at high speed! Skidding on the engines provides absolutely no traction. When dragging the wing with only one gear extended you can stay on the runway until a very low speed and the damage is most probably even less than in case of and all-gear-up landing.The risk of an engine fire is reduced by 50% as well as one engine stays clear of the ground and the stopping distance is also reduced as you can use the wheel brakes and reverse thrust on the 'intact' side. Foaming the runway isn't done too often these days anymore because you can only foam a rather narrow and short strip.In case of the LOT 767 you can see that only the part where the fuselage skidded had been foamed and the right engine was skidding (partially on fire) on the un-foamed runway.Furthermore until the fire engines are re-filled they are usefless and the re-filling takes quite some time.

A very interesting video made by one of the passengers. Seems like the evacuation was more stressful than the landing. Its surprising how landing without landing gear seems smoother than with gear down. I also wonder when exactly the engines were shut down. It's hard to tell from the video. Its also interesting that after the aircraft was raised up, supposedly the landing gear was opened normally from within the cockpit. Last time I flew on a LOT 767, the flight was canceled after 4 1/2 hours of trying to fix some FMC/IRS problem. Hopefully the new 787's will be more reliable.

Pretty nice looks like it will be ready to fly

Nice to see the passenger buses arriving a little quicker than usual ;-)

Thanks for the information and the insight Bstolle. Makes sense when you take all of your points into consideration. I appreciate the knowledge!Regards,John

IKudos to the pilots for a great landing!Is the aircraft/engines repairable?What could keep all the gear from dropping?Are manual gear drops still available on modern airliners?Cheers,- jahman.

What could keep all the gear from dropping?Are manual gear drops still available on modern airliners?

check reply #17

...The alternate gear extension toggle switch powers a small electric motor which does nothing except to remove the uplocks so that the gear can extend via freefall.I wouldn't be surprised if the cause for this gear up landing was just a loose wire inside the switch or something similar.

Do you know if the gear drop is part of regular testing?Cheers,- jahman.

Not during every check, but during the 'bigger' ones, yes

Not during every check, but during the 'bigger' ones, yes

How odd. I'm curious as to what the accident report will have to say.Cheers,- jahman.

Why odd? Way too time consuming and expensive to make a dedictaded check flight during every check.When you extend the gear with the alternate extension you can't retract it anymore and all the gear doors stay open.The 767 is flying since 30 years and this error hasn't occurred a single time...until now. So the system seems to work pretty well.

My money is on the electrical circuit controlling the gear uplocks, coupled with a central hydraulic system leak.

Why odd? Way too time consuming and expensive to make a dedictaded check flight during every check.When you extend the gear with the alternate extension you can't retract it anymore and all the gear doors stay open.The 767 is flying since 30 years and this error hasn't occurred a single time...until now. So the system seems to work pretty well.

My apologies, I meant it the other way around: How odd that the manual gear drop should fail given it is checked.Cheers,- jahman.