There are those social media arguments that get you hooked at 3 a.m. and keep you scrolling to hear both sides of the story. I was recently hooked by such a thread discussing landing gear failures that gave me more questions than answers. I could not sleep as I kept asking myself “Do most land gear failures occur at the nose gear compared to the main landing gear? If so, why?” Since I could not sleep, I got out of bed and started researching.
Four primary factors could explain why it seems the nose gear fails more often than the main landing gear, the first factor being weight distribution. The main landing gear is designed to support a larger percentage of the aircraft’s weight than the nose gear. Therefore, by design, the main landing gear is bulkier than the nose gear. For this reason, the nose gear fails more easily than the main landing gear.
The second factor influencing nose gear failure is complexity. The nose gear is used to steer the aircraft while the main landing gear is primarily used to support aircraft weight during landing. Therefore, the nose gear has more complicated systems to support aircraft steering. Due to the complexity, the nose gear is prone to more failures, especially in deploying.
However, there is a mechanism for pilots to manually deploy nose gear should they fail to deploy automatically.
Lastly, nose gear failure might be more common than main landing gear failure due to the nature of impact during runway excursions. Most landing gear failures occur during runway excursions and abnormal runway contact. Since the nose gear is at the aircraft, it usually experiences more impact from runway incursions as the first point of contact. As such, most failures affect the nose gear.
The research opened my eyes to two possibilities. Foremost, it is probable that the nose gear fails more than the main landing gear because of design differences for weight distribution, complexity of design, and being the first point of contact during runway excursions. Secondly, it may seem that the nose gear fails more than the main landing gear because all failures of the nose gear are more noticeable and critical compared to the main landing gear failures. However, I also realized that there are redundant safety systems to prevent landing gear failures, a fact that afforded me peaceful sleep.
By – Aeropeep Team