Perfect in every detail.
No landing gear, slow down to minimum speed, engines off b4 touch down so that rotor blades don't snap and spin into the fuselage, and then dead straight all the way. Absolutely well done...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fb5_1192271898

Hamdeni

I'd like to congratulate that pilot

Anyone you can walk away from is a good one.

That's absolutely, positively as good as it gets.

Yes but an exceptional one is any landing where the aircraft can be used again without repairs.

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Agreed.

"The pilot's failure to use the landing checklist that resulted in the wheels-up landing."


That's the part that bothered me, I'm afraid.

Where'd you hear that? From the procedure, it's obvious that he knew his gear was retracted.

The fact they had a camera there shows there was a problem.
The part that bothered me was listening to the annoying news anchors.

I got that "checklist" comment from another version of the same incident. After the video finishes, three little boxes pop up over the 'window' - the top one is another tape of the same incident, with different commentary. Try this one...
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6b9cdeb6d2

Okay, but what puzzles me is why he feathered both engines instead of simply adding power and going around, unless there was a gear problem known to the pilot. I doubt seriously if there was a CVR aboard. How about the gear horn? Maybe the props hit the runway and he hadn't retracted the throttles back to the point of horn activation.

And like Mark says, the camera's presence indicates an announced emergency, not a checklist foulup. Just because the post crash investigation turned up no problems doesn't mean that there wasn't a problem. I know of a Twin Beech going in at MIA in 1987 and the NTSB got it wrong, because I had time in that airplane, and I know what caused the crash, but why bother to argue with the Feds? They always like to blame the pilot, anyway. The guys were dead and it was the airplane that killed them, but unless you had about six thousand hours in type, you likely wouldn't know what caused the crash. I do.

Just doesn't seem right. It was a perfectly executed gear up landing. Why land gear up when all you have to do is pull up, add power, and go around if you don't have stuck wheels? It's a mystery to me.

I have a feeling there's a screwup in the link I posted.

I pulled the related NTSB accident report, and in the very first paragraph it refers to the aircraft being destroyed by fire.

In the link I posted, somebody obviously has the wrong commentary with the video.