My cruise altitude in the FMC is 35000 ft but it's taking forever to get there. What am i doing wrong? I can press the VS button, dial in +2000 or so, and it climbs rapidly for a minute or so ... then the feet-per-minute window goes black and the plane resumes barely climbing at all.Tom Kent

It appears your landing gear is down. You've had some kind of landing gear malfunction. The landing gear lights tell it all. With the gear up and off, you should have no landing gear lights illuminated. Find out why the gear did not retract. Maybe a CB poped. Look at the exterior to double check. The airplane is also near stall buffet. Your on the backside of the power curve because of the high altitude. No amount of power available will fly you out of this in this configuration.John Floyd

Hi Tom,The one thing I noticed in your picture is your gear isn't up, that would explain a lot of excess drag.Are you using an add on weather program? I can't make out the outside air temperature in the picture.Dan RaimondoEdit:John beat me to it.

Thanks for those super-fast answers. It WAS the gear; i raised it and climb is normal now.I thought the gear handle was supposed to be in the middle ("off") position -- I thought that meant the gear was retracted and the hydraulics were off. What is the "off" position supposed to be used for?Tom Kent

Gear must be fully up first, then you move the lever to OFF to de-energize the hydraulics.Wait for the transit lights to extinguish before moving the lever from up to off. I suspect this issue was cause by moving the lever before that happened.

After takeoff and positive rate, gear lever to full up position to raise the gear. Once gear is fully raised and all lights are out, you can move the lever to the middle off position, which removes hydraulic pressure from the landing gear system for the cruise portion of the flight in order to preserve the life of all the hydraulic components and seals. No need to impose 3000psi of pressure to the system when not in use.Dan Raimondo

I am not 100%, but I think the off position is to pressurize the landing gear bay. So after the landing gear is up you pull the handle to the off position.George G.

When you raise the gear, let the all the lights go out before you put the handle in the OFF position. The OFF position is used because it cuts off hydraulic flow to the gear system, protecting the hydraulics from a gear malfunction.Green means the gear is DOWN. Red means the gear is either in transit or disagrees with the position of the handle. So, if the handle is UP or OFF and the both the green and red lights are on, that means the gear is still down.

lol classic

Just FYI temperature problems from stuff like FSInn can cause this sort of thing too, but yeah - looks like the gear here.

I remember seeing somewhere that it is good practice to select the landing gear off position after the lights had been extinguished for at least 10 seconds.

Just FYI temperature problems from stuff like FSInn can cause this sort of thing too, but yeah - looks like the gear here.

I was going to mention this as well... is there a fix to this? It can get pretty frustrating when it's +40C outside at 30,000 feet and you can't get up to FL350 because of it.

I wonder how the Gear Down situation affects the pressurization? It is sealed from the interior of the aircraft? If so, there would be no problem leaving the gear down up to cruise level, except for the loud noise right

Yes, don't use FSINN weather. Use AS2012 or FS default. I recommend AS2012

I wonder how the Gear Down situation affects the pressurization? It is sealed from the interior of the aircraft? If so, there would be no problem leaving the gear down up to cruise level, except for the loud noise right

The pressurisation is not related to the landing gear. The Problem is that is produces very much drag and so you'd need more thrust to get up propably which the 737 doesn't have. Also it produces heavy stress on the airplances structure. With gear down you have a Vne of 320kt and not the usual 340kt. Look at the placecard below the gear lever in the Cockpit for more information.