Flight instructors walk a fine line. Like other teachers, they need to give students the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, which means letting them make those mistakes in the first place. Unlike teachers of algebra or poetry, however, they also have to be quick to intervene before the consequences of an error get out of hand.
On April 8, 2008, a CFI took a pilot-rated student around the pattern at California’s Redding Municipal Airport (RDD) in a Cessna 177RG. The instructor was a 10,000-hour ATP who’d logged about a thousand of those hours in the same make and model. The weather was good—clear skies and 14 degrees C, with light, variable winds—and with 7,000 feet of dry asphalt to land on, there was no need to hurry.
The instructor admitted later that he hadn’t noticed that the student never lowered the gear. Neither of them realized it was still retracted until they heard that awful scraping sound. Not only did the student never run the prelanding checklist, but the CFI missed the GUMP check (gas, undercarriage, mixture, prop) that pilots learn to recite automatically on final (or earlier). Apparently neither glanced at the gear-position light, which alone might have been enough to tell them to go around.
But what about the gear horn? Retractable-gear airplanes are usually equipped with a warning that sounds if the airplane gets too slow with the gear still up. Activation, however, typically depends on throttle setting as well as airspeed. The horn in the Cardinal only goes off at manifold pressures below 13 inches. The student was carrying 15 inches, so it never sounded.
Without question, the CFI should have kept a closer eye on things. Checking gear position on final is second nature for experienced retract pilots; chances are he wouldn’t have missed it two times out of a hundred. But the student also should have kept his head in the game. Whether or not he was the legal PIC, his attention should have been centered on landing that airplane—starting with running the checklist, and keeping as tight a focus as if he’d been flying solo.
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