LOT Polish Airlines Flight 16 , landed with all gears up

1 November 2011

LOT Polish Airlines flight LO-16 , Boeing 767-300 registration SP-LPC from Newark to Warsaw with 221 passengers and 10 crew members it was approaching Warsaw airport runway 33 when at 3000 feet the crew reported that they cann't extract the landing gear , went around for work with checklists.The crew it was not able to extend to landing gears manually and landed with all gears up.Airplane stopped inside runway and evacuated.Nobody injured.Airplane received substantial damage

Technical difficulties were detected by Captain Tadeusz Wrona within 30 minutes after takeoff from Newark Liberty International Airport. The crew indicated that the central hydraulic system had malfunctioned. The decision was made to continue to Warsaw in order to use up the heavy load of fuel needed for the transatlantic flight. The craft proceeded to approach as normal, but aborted when the landing gear failed to deploy.

Captain Tadeusz Wrona, a thirty-year veteran pilot with twenty years of experience on the 767, and first officer Jerzy Szwarc informed Warsaw air traffic control (ATC) that they were unable to lower the landing gear due to a hydraulic systems failure. Warsaw ATC instructed them to circle the airport for over an hour and consume excess fuel in order to land light and to allow time for emergency services on ground to prepare for the emergency landing. Visual verification by two Polish Air Force F-16 fighter jets showed that none of the landing gear were down; attempts to lower the gear by alternative means (electrically and mechanically) failed.

The airport was evacuated for the arrival of the aircraft, and roads around the airport were closed to accommodate emergency services. Other flights which were due into Warsaw were diverted to Kraków, Katowice, Poznań, Łódź and Gdańsk or returned to their point of departure.

On board the LOT Polish Airlines 767-300ER were 231 people; eleven crew and 220 passengers, including the members of the technical death metal band Decapitated.

At 14:40 CET the cockpit crew successfully performed an emergency landing at Warsaw Chopin Airport on Runway 33 with no loss of life while the aircraft sustained substantial damage in the accident. Upon landing, all 220 passengers were evacuated in 90 seconds.

The airport remained closed to traffic until 4:00 CET, 3 November 2011 due to the effort of removing crash debris and inspection of the airport runways and aprons etc. Shortly after the evacuation, a team from the Polish State Commission for Aircraft Accident Investigation arrived, and discovered that the C829 circuit breaker, which protects a number of systems including the alternate landing gear extension system was "popped". The C4248 breaker for the alternate landing gear remained closed. Once the aircraft had been lifted off the runway, the C829 circuit breaker was closed, and the landing gear was able to be extended, using the alternate system. This allowed the plane to be towed to the LOT maintenance hangar, for repairs and investigation.

The accident is currently being investigated. A preliminary report shows that the aircraft suffered a hydraulic leak right after takeoff from Newark (after the landing gear and flaps were retracted). The leak was discovered to have been caused by a damaged hose in the central hydraulic system. Pressure in the central hydraulic system dropped as a result. The drop in pressure was recorded on the EICAS and by the flight data recorder.

Both the captain and the first officer held Airline Transport Pilot Licences and had accumulated over 25,000 hours of flying time between them, with over 15,000 of that being on 767 aircraft.

You can read here the preliminary report

Video from Youtube the moment of incident