An Email from My Brother

For want of a circuit breaker, a 767 lands gear up.

 The preliminary accident report came out on the Polish 767 that landed gear up in early November. The hydraulic system that powers the gear lost pressure due to a broken hose, then the electric gear release wouldn't work. The pilots were getting low on gas, so they had to land with the gear up.

The investigators found a circuit breaker popped that controls power to the circuit breaker powering the gear release. The checklist said to check the second, but not the first. They jacked the aircraft, pulled it into a hanger, raised the gear, pushed the CB in, and the gear came down.

No doubt there will be a lot of second guessing and finger pointing. But, it seems to me that the pilots did exactly what they should have.

And people ask if I miss flying.

A popular saying with pilots is that an accident report is the result of months of study of a situation where a pilot had seconds to decide what to do.

(Today's blog is courtesy of an email from my brother Ron who lives near Atlanta and is a retired Delta pilot with 27 years' experience and over 17,000 hours in his logbook. That's 5 million miles by air.)