YouTube is chock full of videos featuring airplanes landing with landing gear retracted or partially extended. One reason is that there is often plenty of time for news crews to arrive by helicopter as the pilot of the stricken airplane kills time to burn off fuel. If you are unlucky enough to experience a ‘gear unsafe’ situation, you’ll likely find it’s one of those slowly unfolding emergencies that leaves you plenty of time to figure out what to do next, and to tap the expertise of a small army of pilots and technicians over the radio to help you resolve your problem without resorting to swapping belly paint with the runway centerline.
Of course, the first place to turn is the pilot’s operating handbook (POH). Each aircraft has a slightly different process, so I won’t even suggest one here. But don’t wait for a real-world situation to refer to that chapter. I recently practiced a manual gear extension during my biennial flight review, and it was certainly a confidence-builder to implement the procedure under controlled circumstances.
