Emirates 777 Crash

[rpm]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-emirates-airplane-crash-idUSKCN10E0Z7

An Emirates Airline flight from India caught fire after making an emergency landing at Dubai International Airport on Wednesday, but all 300 passengers and crew escaped from the burning fuselage, authorities said.

Video purportedly showed a tower of flame bursting from the front of the aircraft, and then a thick black plume of smoke rising into the sky. Reuters was unable to verify the footage independently.

Photographs posted on social media showed a plane lying crumpled on its belly on the tarmac with black smoke pouring from its upper section.

According to air traffic control recordings cited by Aviation Herald, a respected independent website specializing in information on air accidents, controllers at Dubai had reminded the crew of the Boeing 777 to lower the landing gear as it came into approach.

Shortly afterwards, the crew announced they were aborting the landing to "go around," a routine procedure for which pilots are well trained, but the aircraft came to rest near the end of the runway instead, Aviation Herald reported.

There was no immediate confirmation on whether the landing gear was extended when the aircraft touched the ground.

[MiloMorai]

The l/g must have been down as a photo shows the a/c with the starboard wing touching the ground and missing an engine. The fire seems to come from the wing which is supported by the wing flying thro the air from the explosion..

[Zimme83]

Landing gear should have been visible here, Hard to find any good images but I've not seen anything that shows that the gear was down.

[NatCigg]

ill be the first to guess the plane never left auto pilot. 

[Vulcan]

ill be the first to guess the plane never left auto pilot. 

Gear wasn't down and they tried to go around, so either it's pilot error or the gear didn't lower properly (probably still pilot error as they should have noticed unless the gear was incorrectly reported down).

[earl1937]

Gear wasn't down and they tried to go around, so either it's pilot error or the gear didn't lower properly (probably still pilot error as they should have noticed unless the gear was incorrectly reported down).

Left main gear doors are clearly closed in this picture!

[NatCigg]

here is a 777 go around as said in the title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU7C0HJ07zA

[FTJR]

Hard to imagine that they didn't lower the gear, audio warnings to tell them if they hadn't.

Im hearing that they did a "balked landing" actually touched down then attempted to go around. To me that means they've put the power up, and called for the gear up without checking that the aeroplane was actually climbing, the gear came up, the plane "caught" the runway.

The start of duty for that flight is as around 2.30 a.m. it was 12.45 pm. at the time of the accident. The pilots, all the line pilots at least, are doing up to the max 100 hours in 28 days, each month every month.

Fatigue is a huge issue, especially with the majority of flying through the middle of the night.

[Traveler]

Hard to imagine that they didn't lower the gear, audio warnings to tell them if they hadn't.

Im hearing that they did a "balked landing" actually touched down then attempted to go around. To me that means they've put the power up, and called for the gear up without checking that the aeroplane was actually climbing, the gear came up, the plane "caught" the runway.

The start of duty for that flight is as around 2.30 a.m. it was 12.45 pm. at the time of the accident. The pilots, all the line pilots at least, are doing up to the max 100 hours in 28 days, each month every month.

Fatigue is a huge issue, especially with the majority of flying through the middle of the night.

We don't know how the aircraft was configured?  Was the crew using the Autoland/Autogoround feature or were they hand flying?  An FAA report for 2015 noted a decline of pilot skills in commercial pilots and attributed it to the fact that most major carriers don't allow their pilots to hand fly the aircraft, instead requiring pilots to use the autopilots and  monitor the flight.  As a result on some of the 6 month check rides Captains and First Officers were busting because they couldn't hold an assigned altitude or airspeed in IMC conditions without a working autopilot.   

I have a friend who is a check pilot for Continental, he sets up the simulator and  has them take off into a 50 foot overcast and he fails the flight director, autopilot, autothrottle and radios.  He gives them one working NDB and transponder.  He says the new guys just coming into the company have far to much reliance on automation and lack some very basic airmen skills.

[Vulcan]

Hard to imagine that they didn't lower the gear, audio warnings to tell them if they hadn't.

Early reports are that ATC told them to put their gear down. I think that sounds like the gear was still up on final approach?