A Q400 photo accompanying the story. By the time it reaches national press, it will be an A380.
Challenging times being a passenger in/out of Armidale at the moment with all the smoke closing the airport. Another faulty light in a Q300 last week forced a return to ARM, and a wait for an engineer and new crew.
It’s not a faulty light. A faulty light wouldn’t work when you needed it to....
Undercarriage indications are duplicated in some way. So, you might have three red/green lights on the instrument panel, and also a similar indication on one of the screens. But, the two systems will actually be totally separate, using different sensors to get their information.
When gear is retracted in flight, all lights are out. When it’s extended, and locked, all are green. And when in transit between the two positions, they’ll be red. Additionally, some aircraft separately indicate the door position. In larger aircraft, the doors close after the gear transitions. It doesn’t matter all that much if the doors are open when you land, as they shouldn’t come into contact with the ground, but obviously you’ll need closed doors after take off, or you won’t be going very far.
If you end up with one system saying the gear is down, and the other saying it’s in transit, it is almost certainly locked down. Nevertheless, you’d treat it with an abundance of caution, and would consider getting whatever emergency services there are to stand to. If both systems are red, then you have a real issue.
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