On 4th February, a Sun Country Boeing 737-800 suffered a collapse of its right-hand main landing gear on touch down after a problem with the landing gear retraction on take off.
According to Avherald, the 20 years old aircraft with registration N817SY performing flight SY-110 from Las Vegas to Minneapolis, USA was climbing out of Las Vegas’ runway 01R when the crew stopped the climb at 9500 feet due to a problem with the retraction of the right-hand main gear.
The crew performed troubleshooting and about 30 minutes after departure decided to return to Las Vegas and landed 40 minutes after departure. After touching down, the right side main landing gear collapsed and the aircraft came to a stop on the runway.
Onboard were 50 passengers plus 6 crew, all were disembarked by stairs, no major injuries were reported.
“We will first and foremost take care of our passengers and crew. We will then fully investigate this incident to understand what happened.”
said Sun Country CEO Jude Bricker to Knsiradio
Cover Photo via Twitter/Aeronews
I don’t understand why these gear collapses keep happening to 737’s. The gear is the least complicated of any in a commercial airliner even without retraction covers. Could that be the problem with all manner of outside pollution including salt air getting inside the gear compartments accelerating corrosion (IF that’s the issue)? Since 737’s are likely the longest in service of all airliners, it’s also possible that another look at the retracting mechanism may need upgrading if that has not significantly changed since inception. Admittedly, the effected 737’s are not those originally flown 40 years ago.