I saw a small jet take off from SJC, but noticed the landing gear was still down when it flew over my work, which is over a mile away from the airport. Then I noticed it make a hard left turn and head back towards the airport at a low altitude. It happened at about 3:30 pm today. Any info on this?
Possibly this guy here…
flightaware.com/live/flight/N844 … /KSJC/KGPI
Zoom in on SJC and you’ll see a loop back over the airport before departing the area on its flight. As I type this, they are at FL390 and will be arriving in Kalispell soon. I guess they got the gear up… We’ll see what happens on the other end.
Sometimes, especially in the summer, when an airplane delays the gear retraction, it’s to cool the brakes. If the plane has a short ground time, the brakes don’t have enough time to cool off. One minute of leaving the gear down after take off is equal to about 30 minutes of waiting on the ground for them to cool (times dependant on airplane/brake type).
It was about 105 today in SJC so the above sounds logical. But in this case the aircraft was on the ground for about 3 hours.
Another possible scenario - just throwin out stuff here…
The pilot has poor brake techniques. Fast taxi, using the brakes alot on the taxi out will heat up the brakes quick (especially if it’s 105!).
If not, then maybe a burned out light bulb and the crew didn’t get a gear up light so they cycled the gear, left it down, flew down the runway, got an all three down/up visual confirmation from the tower and continued on their merry way. Just a theory… 