As long as we fly aircraft with retractable landing gear, there will be gear-up landings, a phenomenon not unique to any one make or model of airplane. Read the daily FAA aircraft incident reports—the vast majority of which do not meet NTSB reporting criteria and so will not be investigated further or included in official accident statistics—and you’ll find several gear-ups each week. Talk to aircraft parts suppliers and salvage yards, and you’ll find there are even more than appear on the FAA website. Although there are effective techniques and mitigations for avoiding gear-ups, it’s no wonder the fatalistic phrase “there are those who have, and those who will” have a gear-up landing is so well-known.
The gear-ups we know most about are those that are recorded live and broadcast on the internet or local television news, with predictable commentary. If the local TV news team was in place to witness an airplane landing with its gear partly or fully up, it’s because they knew it was going to happen. Which means the pilot also knew, and told others. Those episodes are not the typical “oops, I forgot” distraction event. It was the result of a mechanical failure the pilot could not correct in-flight (or may not have known how to correct). The time between detecting failure and turning final was great enough that the pilot had time to prepare him/herself and first responders.
