2024-12 · NASA ASRS report 2190258
PA-30 flight crew reported they failed to detach a small tug from the aircraft prior to departure; resulting in jammed landing gear during retraction. Flight crew removed tug in flight; extended landing gear and returned to land.
I was a Multi-engine instructor (MEI) who was conducting a training flight in a Piper Twin Comanche. Aircraft was fueled and pre-flighted. Prior to departure; CFI-MEI went to assist another student struggling to start a PA-28 aircraft due to cold. After assisting student with engine start I; the CFI-MEI; returned to the aircraft and boarded with a small portable electric tug still attached to the aircraft. Aircraft was taxied and took off with the electric tug attached. Gear was raised and gear mechanism jammed. Gear was unable to be extended with electric gear motor. Attempts to manually extend gear initially failed due to manual extension bar suffering a structural failure under load. MEI student and instructor removed handle knob from the top of the handle and attempted to put the gear down using that side of the handle. Attempts were unsuccessful. Next; efforts were made to fly the aircraft in various attitudes and airspeeds in an attempt to dislodge the tug from the nosewheel. Those efforts were also unsuccessful. Next; with emergency services on field; low passes were made in an attempt to knock off the tug using the runway. Those efforts also failed. Finally; we departed the airport and made a final attempt to get the gear down manually prior to executing a gear up landing. I positioned the MEI student in the back seat; placed the aircraft in a slow flight condition with flaps extended and 10 knots above stall speed. I then advised him to use his foot to push the gear level forward. The assumption was this course of action might provide the leverage needed to lock the gear down manually. Worse case; it would break the manual extension lever; and we would be no worse off than we were. This attempt to get the gear down was successful. The gear warning horn silenced; the gear down light illuminated; the nose gear was observed down in the nacelle mirror; and a chase plane pilot visually observed that the main gear appeared to be fully extended. We made the decision to return to ZZZ and execute a landing on RWY XX. On short final; the engines were secured and the propellers feathered for a dead stick landing in the event of gear collapse or runway excursion due to the electric tug. An uneventful landing was made; and the aircraft was towed back to a maintenance hangar for inspection. A gear door arm needs to be replaced; and we elected to overhaul the gear motor out of an abundance of caution. The root cause of this issue was the distraction created by the student pilot's difficulty starting a neighboring aircraft. This took me out of my normal workflow; and I did not return to that workflow prior to boarding the plane. The preflight checklist had been returned to the aircraft that point and was not reviewed again by either the MEI or MEI student. The aircraft was more difficult to taxi and takeoff but was falsely attributed to the cold weather causing the nose wheel steering to be more difficult. A call from another pilot after takeoff did advise of the tow bar issue; however it came after the gear up was attempted. To prevent a recurrence of this issue in the future; I will incorporate two actions: 1) With no exception always perform a final walk around of the aircraft prior to boarding and 2) Delay return of the checklist to the cabin until all preflight steps are completed; including assessing towbar removal.
I am a MEI candidate in training and was receiving instruction from an MEI. Today was my first lesson so he was acting as PIC.He and I completed a preflight of the Piper Twin Comanche. He used a tow bar to pull the plane out from the hangar however he did not remove it prior to taxi which was the fundamental cause of our problems. I also neglected to notice it hadn't been removed.He taxied to the runway and noted that the plane wasn't taxiing very smoothly. I did not taxi as the copilot side does not have brake pedals in this plane. I did complete the takeoff roll and was having difficulty maintaining centerline but I chalked it up to me being new to this plane and not having flown a multi-engine plane in several months.Shortly after takeoff; another pilot radioed that we took off with the tow bar attached.He attempted multiple maneuvers to shake it free; including climbing; rapid descents; yawing; and steep turns. When that didn't work we also made several low approaches over the runway to try and drag the tow bar off; but it remained attached.The gear also got stuck in a half up position because of the tow bar being attached and we had to manually extend the gear.Emergency services were called and present at the airport due to the possibility of a no gear landing. However he was able to land safely with the tow bar still attached by performing a soft field landing.Fundamentally; we should have done a more thorough preflight inspection and noted the tow bar still attached. We should have stated clearly who was responsible for the preflight inspection and not shared responsibility without clearly stating the division of tasks. We should have stopped taxiing when we noticed that the plane was struggling to taxi. And we should have aborted takeoff when we noticed the plane was having difficulty maintaining centerline.There was only very minor damage to the airplane: a bent rod in the nose gear assembly; and a broken gear motor. No injuries.
Source: NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System (public domain). Reports are voluntary submissions and are not verified by NASA.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.