Plane Retracts Gear Too Early

Enjoy this episode of 3 Minutes of Aviation!

✈ SOURCES / FURTHER INFORMATION

Qantas Boeing 787 Dreamliner early gear retraction

China Eastern Boeing 787 pilot missing go around call

Emirates Airbus A380 go around in extreme crosswind

SWISS Airbus A220 cockpit view steep approach into London City

Bhutan Airlines Airbus A319 go around in Paro

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[LancerWang]

As a former 787 driver, I can tell it is 100% normal by design. It's called "Early Door Function". As soon as the aircraft sensed the wheel had left the ground, it open the gear door automatically even before pilots move the gear lever. Then when the pilot select gear up, you save several seconds waiting time for the door to open before swing the gear into the wheel well. This function reduce the gear retracting time and improve climbing performance. 787s have other small interesting tricks like this one to save fuel and improve performance.

[wwt]

If the controller had just said, "China Eastern 2035, go around, go around, " rather than adding in "runway 14" there probably would have been zero miscommunication.

[MaxViva-umbs]

787 gear door open automatically as soon as weight comes off wheel. This, apparently was a design to reduce retraction time.

[gman]

If the pilot didn't understand the first time, saying it faster and adding words to the command doesn't help.

[andre-]

As per correct phraseology: controller should just said "<callsign> go around" - not speak about rwy and add unnecessary stuff to confuse pilots with minimal English skills.
Controllers should be really good at this, giving short and correct instructions can save lives (and in this case, luckily there was plenty of time)

[andymanaus]

I'm getting a bit weary of the unnecessarily misleading captions on these videos, to be honest.

[clqudy]

I personally like to retract the gear while still taxiing.

[northmaineguy]

V1, V2 rotate. Positive rate -- gear up! I was a tower controller before moving to the radar room, and I have seen thousands of take-offs; I did not see an early retraction of the gear at all.

[AnimalisMD]

That Emirates plane looked like it was just hovering!😳

[ranchopatriot]

Don't give runway number with go around command. Duh.

[mikeybhoutex]

Sorry 3MoA, the title is incorrect, but I bet it got the clicks! :)

Not that anyone will see this, but the doors on the 787-9 and -10 drop upon conditions where the airplane is climbing. This is NOT to speed up the gear retraction. It's to improve performance as has been said, but the 'performance' in question is the cancellation of a porpoising event made possible by the gear doors opening and causing an aerodynamic effect where the nose must be dropped then raised again as the doors open.

By 'early dropping' the gear doors upon the wings taking the weight of the aircraft on climb out, this porpoising is eliminated.

So there you go. I had to find out the story when I heard about the early drop (aka 'predrop' as some call it) and could not believe it myself. Doors dropping is a feature, not a bug! :)

Even so... this 787 dropped the nose then lifted it back up anyway. Weird. :|

[LuciFeric]

They wont retract until the weight is off the gear.

[Jay_Bird]

At fist I thought that flight into London was in real time and I was like, SHIT! They're coming in HOT!

[microburst]

Believe it or not, due accent, clear to land and go around can be very similar. Saying the runway in a go around is also non standard and utterly confusing for a pilot.

From the Fcom.

To improve performance, an early doors function automatically pre-opens the main landing gear doors one second after lift-off and prior to the pilot moving the gear lever to the UP position. If the pilot does not move the gear lever to UP within 30 seconds, the main gear doors return to the closed position. During a touch-and-go, the early doors function does not activate until the airplane has been on the ground for more than 30 seconds.

[wwt]

If the controller didn't keep saying "go around runway 14", and instead just said "go around, go around, " there probably wouldn't have been any miscommunication.

[TiptronicSS]

That 380 is such an incredible creation. It was hovering in the air for a moment 😅 then the massive engines makes such a roar on the go around. It's like a dinosaur 😂 (I want 1 😜)

[sherifbatawy]

1:08 Go around means go around. Why TH she keeps adding Runway 14 to that simple command rendering it confusing?!

[PN_]

As others have noted, that QF was a pretty normal departure…

[AlexdAviator]

runway 14 doesn’t make any sense, a go around is a go around. the fact that she added the runway was probably the cause of the confusion because she commanded a go around the same way you would command a landing clearence.