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Landing Gear

The Landing Gear is an important part of an aircraft. You are on the plane to travel from here to there. But for the pilot, the landing gear is very essential piece of equipment that affects flying characteristics and performance. The style of landing gear on an aircraft can range from a single wheel to complex multi-wheel systems.

A Single Wheel: Some airplanes have only a single tire. Gliders are the most common examples of single wheel planes. The pilot must be balance a glider on the single wheel during takeoff and landing.

Two wheels: Aircrafts called "tail draggers" have two main landing gear and a little wheel or skid on very rear portion of the plane. Tail dragger airplanes are steered on the ground with the rudder and require some very specific flying skills when taking off and landing.

Three wheels: The modern landing gear style is the tricycle type with 2 main landing gear and a nose gear. The steerable nose gear makes airplane easier to steer on the ground. Takeoff and landing with the tricycle type gear is easier to learn than with the tail-dragger. A ground loop is not possible with this type of gear.

Retraction: An airplane's landing gear is either fixed or retractable. Retractable landing gear increases the performance and fuel economy by reducing airflow drag. It also ads cost and complexity. A pilot who is switching from fixed to retractable needs to make certain to remember to lower the gear before landing.

Military Aircraft: Military aircrafts have all sorts of interesting landing gear configurations. The B-52 "Buff" cold war bomber has 4 sets of tires like a car. All four sets are steerable. The Buff also has wheels attached with the wingtips that fall away during takeoff.

Recently we have seen of aircraft landing gear failures where aircraft have come in with one of the landing gear in an inappropriate position, turned side ways or only half way down.

All landing gear use hydraulics and hydraulics require fluid. All the airplanes, which had the problems use hydraulic fluid and are capable of flying above 12,500 feet. That is the point pressurization is necessary and required in airplanes unless you have oxygen masks onboard for the pilots. Temperature decreases at approximately 2 degrees per thousand feet. On a cold day it is even colder up there where these aircraft fly. it is the common problem with gears, but also have many human mistakes and technical faults includes that causes the failure of landing gear.