Scudrunners

S E GA gear up or down?
Read somewhere else it does not make a difference in survival rate.
Any stats either way?

Well another question would be if you are going to land an amphibious flying boat on the water would you land it gear up or gear down?

[size=3]I know nothing about amphibious operations :-X but rumor has it one should not  select gear down when landing on water
My question comes after reading[/size]

[size=3]'' Contrary to popular belief, gear up or down doesn't matter.  Whatever allows you to land slowest is best.  I think that gear up may allow you to stretch the glide a bit more to a better ditching area though.''

What do you think about this statement?
[/size]

[quote]Contrary to popular belief, gear up or down doesn't matter. What ever allows you to land slowest is best.

What do you think about this statement.[/quote]

Well since you are asking me my thoughts on that statement my opinion is whoever made it doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about.

But then maybe I don't understand the subject?

I never had a complete engine failure, only once right after takeoff the engine lost power  at about 200'but I was lucky to have 5000' of runway in front of me, so other than that I don't have any personal experience .

I do agreed with the statement that touching down at the slowest possible speed maintaining control is the best for survival , however I always thought that for a land plane making an emergency landing on water gear up is the safest.

Thank you for your input

You are correct, an emergency landing in the water is safest with the gear up in any airplane.


Whoever wrote that bit of advice you posted does not have a clue about the subject.


If the crew that landed the Airbus in the Hudson river had put the gear down it would have been a whole different outcome.

I also recently heard a statement about leaving flaps up on low wing aircraft (only).  I had never considered the argument before but it made sense - on a low wing aircraft, the flaps may act like a submarine tail plane and worse than that, may be ripped off and compromise the wing tanks, losing buoyancy.  I have no idea about the validity of the statement, but compromising the integrity of the wing tanks which might otherwise keep you floating for a while sounded like it a good argument.  Obviously you end up with a higher touchdown speed, but that may well be worth it if it means not nosing in and staying afloat long enough to get everyone out.

I would suspect much of this would be aircraft specific.

I doubt most GA light aircraft are "certified for ditching" let alone tested to see how they float. 

[img width=323 height=500]http://i.stack.imgur.com/McK3V.png[/img]