A Boeing 737-2K9 (27 years old) was operating a domestic scheduled passenger flight in Mexico, between the cities of Cancun and Guadalajara Onboard the aircraft was a crew of 5 and 106 passengers.
The aircraft after the evacuation was completed, note the heat damage to the engine cowling. (Source; Aviación Guadalajara © Unknown)
After an uneventful flight from Cancun, the aircraft is approaching Guadalajara just before 18.00 local time. All is going according to plan until the crew selects the landing gear lever to the down position. They got a transit indication for the landing gears, but no down and locked for any of the landing gears. And declared an emergency, stating they had gear problems and required firefighters and medical assistance. The necessary checklists were initiated by the crew. Instead of landing the flight did a flypast of the ATC tower to get a visual confirmation of the landing gear position.
Fire damage to the right engine (Source; Aviación Guadalajara © Unknown)
This confirmed the landing gear was not down. The aircraft climbs to 11.000 feet after the flypast and the crew attempts to lower the gear putting the aircraft through some maneuvers.
These attempts don't bring the required result, the landing gears do not extend. The only thing they can do is to carry out a gear-up landing, after the necessary checklists are completed the aircraft is vectored to intercept the ILS of runway 28 at Guadalajara. There is a light wind straight down the runway, 280º at 8 knots. ATC then clears the aircraft for landing, while the emergency services are already on standby.
Aircraft recovery started with the masking over of the operator's name and the aircraft registration. (Source; Aviación Guadalajara © Unknown)
A short time later the aircraft touches down on both engines and sparks are seen immediately. ATC warns the crew of signs of fire in the area of the right engine, immediately changing the message to "fire in both engines. As soon as the aircraft is stopped the cockpit crew shut down the aircraft as per emergency procedure and initiates the evacuation of the aircraft. All slides deployed normally and the evacuation was quickly completed while firefighters apply fire fighting foam to the engines.
The airport remained closed for several hours until the aircraft could be removed from the runway.
Damage to the aircraft was extensive enough to declare the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.
VIdeo of the emergency landing and aftermath, All audio in Spanish (Source; Aviación Guadalajara © Unknown)
Editorial note; This blog was written based on different sources on the internet. V2 Aviation - Training & Maintenance has not been able to find an accident investigation report on this belly landing. The cause of the landing gear failure is not known to us. In case there are inconsistencies in this blog don't hesitate to get in touch via the comments function at the bottom of this page.
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