The Inspector wrote:
It has been announced that the 'official' reason for the LOT 767-300 gear up landing a few weeks ago was due to a circuit breaker in the pulled out 'OFF' position (OFF does NOT mean 'On Full Force'). Granted, the P-11 panel over the flight crews heads is a forest of 3/8ths inch diameter 'all look alike' KLIXON circuit breakers. but when the gear didn't extend procedures in the QRH or on EICAS should have included 'check circuit breakers @ J 16 & J 17 for in/on'.
And how come the manual latch override switch wasn't pressed (it's right next to the gear extension lever on the panel in front of the first officer) to electomechanically unlock the gear and cause it to free fall into Down and Locked? 'Lucy...you got some 'splainin' to do'
Actually, it seems to be a bit more involved than this. According to reports, they lost fluid in the center hydraulic system (one of 3 systems on the plane) due to a line that blew shortly after takeoff. Loosing the center system has minimal impact on flight controls, but it is the system that normally operates the landing gear. In this situation, moving the gear lever will not extend the gear due to a total lack of hydraulic pressure. The procedure in this situation is to depress the "Alternate Gear" switch on the panel, which runs a dedicated electric pump that extends an actuator on each gear that physically shoves the uplock latches out of the way and allows the gear to free fall with the assistance of over-center springs to lock it down. The circuit breaker that was found pulled out is the one for the alternate gear pump, so the pump apparently never ran, which equals no gear extension. I do find it unusual that they never checked the breakers while they were flying around to burn off some fuel............