I went plane spotting at flying cloud municipal airport in the Minneapolis area and saw a Mooney do a belly up landing. The aircraft approached with landing gear down and about 10 meters above the runway the landing gear went up. The pilot did not seem to notice and landed. How could this happen?
It had to be deliberate because the Mooney uses a Johnson Bar to move the landing gear. It isn’t like inadvertently flipping a switch. Perhaps the gear wasn’t locked in place. A red light would show unsafe gear on the panel.
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It was weird that it was down but when up right before landing. You can’t just “bump” the landing gear lever. There may be a possibility of a attempted go-around. It was a windy day so maybe the wind pushed it on the tarmac.
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I’ve never raised the gear on a go around until I had a very positive rate of climb. That said in a Mooney one can go around with the gear down without exceeding the gear down speed limit. IMO this was a very serious pilot error.