Oh what the F!@# Seriously

[ScudRunner-d95]

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The caption reads.
"A simple mistake with bad consequences! After landing the pilot called for “flaps up” and the copilot selected “gear up”!
A lot of aircraft have “Weight on the wheels” sensors that won’t allow the landing gear to retract on the ground, obviously this was not the case here"


First off who the fuck has a copilot on a Bonanza?(not sure) Secondly why you popping flaps up on touch down anyway.???

[Slick Goodlin]

That’s not going to buff out.

I’m not really one to believe internet captions, I’d bet the pilot did it himself.  As for why retract flaps on roll out, every so often someone gets a ‘better idea’ on how to do things and doesn’t think the consequences all the way through.  At my last company I had a hell of a time dragging pilots back to SOP after they had a well-intentioned idea on how to go off script and do things better, often with risks they hadn’t considered.  Even the SOPs were written by folks who thought they knew better, including one about retracting flaps on one of our fleets of the roll out.  We deleted that to prevent someone from accidentally grabbing the gear handle even though it seemed you’d have to be pretty dumb to grab the big wheel-shaped knob instead of the flap handle.  Good thing we did, about a week and a half later a sister ship to one of ours at another company had the gear accidentally retracted after landing on a training flight.

Shit happens, nobody was hurt, let it be a reminder to all of us not to make shit up unless we’re getting paid to do so.

[David MacRay]

I thought bringing the flaps up helps get more weight on the wheels. I have had instructors tell me assertively, "Get those flaps up."

The risk in a plane with retractable gear does seem a bit concerning. Though I wondered the same thing as Slick, "How do you mix up the two switches when one often has a little wheel on it?" Maybe small planes should not have electric flap motors.

[Nark1]

I've never flown to an airport that required flap retraction on roll out, due to the length. (Shortness)

I've also have never landed off-airport to a place that required the same.

It's a technique (I use it), but if you need it, you've done some poor planning.

[David MacRay]

Fair enough. When it comes to airplanes I usually live here in a pretend world. Occasionally flying around with an instructor. Sometimes we pretend to fly into a critically short field where we would die landing too long.

I just went for my first official dual flight of the year and because it would just be too hard to let me fly with the instructor I requested, they sent me out with a new guy. I think he was the most senior one. They threatened to send me with a third guy but then the one I went with stole me.

He was quite excellent yet he asked me to say, "Any conflicting traffic please advise." I told him I'm not saying that last bit and I didn't.

[Slick Goodlin]

In our case retracting flaps was originally written in as a means of saving expense on flap skin replacements (we saw a lot of gravel strips).  Eventually we decided it was cheaper to re-skin flaps from time to time than have to replace a whole airplane even once and the practice was changed.  IMO it was all moot anyways, the planes had what looked like 1/8” armour on the underside of the flaps behind the main wheels which looked dead simple to swap out if that was ever even needed.

[Colonel]

It's hard to argue the cost/benefit of raising the flaps during the landing.

Lots of downside, not much upside.  If you want to land short, get your
speed down and touch down at the start of the runway.  Kinetic energy
is a function of velocity squared.

Hard braking is a really good way to flat-spot your tires, if you don't have
good anti-skid.  If you land with minimum energy, you shouldn't need
maximum braking to stop.  Brakes aren't much use on anything other
than pavement anyways, and paved runways are generally pretty long.

If you look at anyone that runs off the end of the runway, it's generally
not the brakes that are to blame.  They approached too high, too fast,
touched down a long way down the runway, and refused to overshoot.

[Nark1]

Pretty much every Civil Air Patrol approach ever flown. 

^ agree with you Andy.  Unless you can get meaningful friction with your tires, your going to hydroplane or skid.

Time and a place for everything. 
This winter will be my first with my 180 being airworthy.  The snow should be fun. 

[Colonel]

Get a Tanis heater and a Kennon engine cover. 

Says the guy who lives where it never snows ... I run W100 year-round!  :D

I do not miss that cat-piss called "multi-grade" which is a
necessary evil in the frozen north.  Wretched stuff, really
only suitable for lubricating residential-only interior door hinges.

[ScudRunner-d95]

Our SOP regarding flap retraction is a trigger response.
After roll out and exiting the runway the Skipper stows the speedbrakes handle
which triggers the FOs after landing flow which includes retracting the flaps.