Retractable landing gear

The trade-off, the two common actuation systems, the safety devices and their limits, and the emergency extension.

15 min read · The complex airplane

After this lesson you can

  • Explain the performance trade-off that retractable gear buys, and its cost in complexity.
  • Describe how electric and hydraulic gear retraction systems move the wheels, in general terms.
  • State the difference between VLO and VLE and explain why VLO is usually the lower of the two.
  • List the safety devices in a typical gear system and the specific limit of each one.

Gear-up landings are almost never mechanical failures. The gear works, the hydraulics are fine, the switches are healthy — and the airplane still slides to a stop on its belly, because a pilot who was doing everything else right forgot one item on a list. That single fact should reorganize how you think about this system: understanding the plumbing matters for the rare real failure, but the skill that actually prevents accidents is a checklist habit that survives interruption.

This lesson covers both halves. First, how the gear itself works and what its safety devices do and do not protect against. Second, the operating discipline that the Airplane Flying Handbook identifies as the actual difference between pilots who never gear themselves up and pilots who eventually do.

The rest of this lesson

  1. 1.The trade-off
  2. 2.How the gear actually moves
  3. 3.Position indicators and the safety devices — and their limits
  4. 4.VLO and VLE
  5. 5.Normal operations and the checklist point
  6. 6.Emergency extension

These 6 sections, their figures, the checks along the way and the end-of-lesson quiz come with the CPL track. Paid once, yours for good.

See what the CPL track costsEvery module 1 is free to read, no account, no card.

Key terms

Try to recall each definition before turning the card.