Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 February 2009 10:54:20
So I was just watching the West Wing episode where Airforce One can't land because the light that says the landing gear is down didn't go on and hence they had to wait for an F-16 to go and look at the plane to see if the landing gear wasn't down or if the light was broken.
I have seen this scenario on Aircrash Investigation. In one crash, which occurred in the early days of autopilot, a plane crashed because all the flight crew were hunting around to work out if the light was broken or if the landing gear was broken and the captain had kicked the autopilot button with his foot and the altitude kept dropping and no-one paid attention to the beeping.
ANYWAY, why can't there be three lights? The first would be "landing gear up", the second would be "landing gear down" and the third would be "landing gear down and yellow parrot puppet disengaged" or something. The third light would be independent of the second and would indicate that some arbitrary event has occurred - an event that is unnecessary for the plane to land safely, but that relies on the landing gear being in position to occur.
This system is not foolproof, however if the "landing gear down" light fails, there is a good chance that the "landing gear down AND yellow parrot puppet disengaged" light will still function. And if the "landing gear up" light never comes on in the first place... well... that's a bit of a problem... but not as big a problem as not knowing if the landing gear is down when one wishes to land.
After all, it's hard to find F-16s for every plane in anywhere in the world. Well, I've never attempted to find one at short notice, but I IMAGINE there may be difficulties finding one in many areas.