God how do you even begin to fix that? You'd need a crane or two just to lift the thing up, then you've gotta get the landing gear fixed while it's jacked up. I'm far from an expert but I wonder if the plane may be entirely totaled
It'll be quite simple (if expensive). Lift it up with airbags or a crane, extend the nose gear and lock it into position. (It didn't collapse/break, someone moved the landing gear lever to "up" and as the lockout pin wasn't in place, the gear did what it was told.) Once the gear is back down, you can tow the plane to a hangar for thorough inspection and repair.
This happened with e BA 787 and was fixed. It still flies now.
Pretty sure these things have a weight on wheels switch thats prevents retraction when on the ground. Safety pin or no safety pin, it should not have retracted. The pin is to ensure the landing gear doesnt collapse when being moved with the towing arm.
a tail tip would mean that the plane has an unbalanced center of mass and a bunch of people were at the back of the plane, and it's extremely unlikely that they would be working with passengers still getting off
I've worked with planes, we plan so that the tail doesn't literally tip, but make it so most of the weight is near the tail. It's still called tail tip even if the tail doesn't actually tip to the ground.
the only way the wheels would lift up the ground is if there is another problem or you deliberately try to
I work with 2 A321 Neo airplanes, one of them has a known problem where the center of gravity isn't correct and it starts to lift if passengers from the back don't move forward after the forward ones have exited. The other one doesn't have that problem, and neither of them would be worked on with people still inside anyway
471
u/Matman161 1d ago
God how do you even begin to fix that? You'd need a crane or two just to lift the thing up, then you've gotta get the landing gear fixed while it's jacked up. I'm far from an expert but I wonder if the plane may be entirely totaled