Ek18 today
 

Diverted to LHR due to a landing gear failure (it didn't retract)

How painful for those passengers!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ed-London.html


PS: Apologies for the link to the daily wail. :D

An Emirates Airbus A380-800, registration A6-EEB performing flight EK-18 from Manchester,EN (UK) to Dubai (United Arab Emirates), was climbing out of Manchester's runway 23R when the crew could not retract the landing gear, stopped the climb at FL090 and entered a hold before deciding to divert to London Heathrow,EN (UK), where the aircraft landed safely on runway 27L about 90 minutes after departure.

A6-EEB seen on departure from Manchester (Photo: Chris Ogilvieþ):
http://avherald.com/img/emirates_a38...r_170312_1.jpg

Source: avherald

Plane actually flow low 9,000 from Wakefield to London, would have been a great day to Sky Jump!
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/a...a6-eeb#cb719a6

Landing video can be seen at: Actually a good landing

A bit disconcerting to read this story as I travel on EK very shortly. Does anyone know the root case of the emergency landing?

Gear didn't retract was the cause of divert. It happens and with the fleet the size of EK it won't be an uncommon occurrence, but isn't really a concern no need to worry. Ek (and every other airline) will have planes that go tech everyday for one reason or another.

Yes, the full investigation and report was produced in the 6 hours since the incident ;)

Surely the root cause is that the wheels wouldn't retract? :)

I saw a few comments in the media about a locking pin that wasn't removed...

That's usually the cause for these kinds of things. Not sure if the mechanics of the push back but it may be the push back crew though based on my understanding the locking pin used during push back also decouples nose wheel steering so they wouldn't have been able to taxi.

That's what the big red "remove before flight" tags are for!

Interesting to see that they diverted to one of the busiest airports in the world. This decision was probably made to reassign pax easily to other EK flights, but they had to be pretty certain that the front gear wouldn't fail ...

Also an airport where they are pretty much guaranteed to get both A380 qualified engineers and parts without delay!

A short lesson in root cause determination:

Start asking 'why':
'Why would the wheels not retract ' is only the first question.
Once you get a reply (for instance 'the locking pin was not removed'), ask:
'Why was the locking pin not removed'
Once you get the answer to that, continue to ask 'why' (like a 2 year old) until there is no need to ask more questions and there is a clear path to prevent recurrence (or to reduce the chance of recurrence).

It is unlikely that you will need to ask 'why' more than 5 times, hence the name '5 whys' for this problem solving technique.

[/ lecturing mode off....]

Runway length would have been the deciding factor. They wanted to keep the pressure off the front wheels for as long as possible, so would need as longer runway as possible.

As its been stated the nose wheel steering bypass pin would have meant that the nose wheel steering would not have been available. The other pin is the down lock pin, which I doubt would have been inserted on a turn, unless its towed to a remote stand then back to the gate at MAN. There are so many systems which could have stopped it retracting, is it confirmed it was only the nose gear?