This a follow up on this incident… My earlier article regarding a string of C-17 mishaps and runway overshoots at Bagram has drawn quite a bit of traffic lately, and no small number of comments criticizing my attempt at analysis. While looking around for a status update on the misadventures of Bagram and its armada of incoming C-17s, I found interesting new photographs from the night of the crash.
Note the position Landing Gear Lever in one of the photos. Hopefully that was just the ground crew exhibiting their sense of humour … though just because the lever was up doesn’t mean the aircrew forgot to cover that small detail on their checklist. There’s still some hope that this was a mechanical failure of some sort.
As one armchair pundit put it here:
My understanding is that the first realization of a problem was when it took a very high power setting to try to taxi off the runway.
Heh. My theory of a mechanical failure may be contested by the fact that in recovering the plane the ground crew were able to lift the plane, deploy the landing gear and actually tow the C-17 off of the runway. Things are not looking good for the aircrew.
Planes fly safer with Flight Engineers period !
If they had designed the C-17 with a Flight Engineer on board this sort of thing would not have happened. We were always keeping an eye on the front of the plane because we we perfectly aware that in the event of a crash we would be the last thing to go through the Co=Pilots mind.
Well I can say that this was def. not caused by a mechanical failure.. I can tell you that it was pilot error, and that the position of that gear control handle had nothing to do with any ground crew trying to be funny… it had to do with someone not following procedures and not paying full attention… I am glad that when something goes wrong like this, the first blame goes to the ground crew, or the maintenance done on the aircraft.. it is never the pilots fault at first… Man I love my job…. it is always our fault when some “I got a degree” s**t does something stupid like this…
Hi james…I was the ground crew..and yes…the pilot…and copilot did not lower the gear. I have additional photos of the incident. Farris