Not their best landing...V2.0

It just goes to show that it really can happen to anyone. It also goes to show why discipline in the cockpit is so important to safe operations, regardless of what other distractions may present themselves.

On January 30, 2009, a $200 million C-17 Globemaster III made a wheels-up belly landing at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. The plane slid 4,500 feet before coming to rest. There were no injuries.

On May 7, 2009, the Air Mobility Command (AMC) released its findings:

“The Accident Investigation Board, convened by AMC, concluded the primary cause of the mishap was the failure of the pilots to lower the landing gear and confirm proper aircraft landing configuration in accordance with the Before Landing checklist.

“The AIB president also found that aircrew distractions, task saturation, reduced cockpit visual cues, failure of the flight crew to cross- monitor each other’s performance, the tower’s failure to transmit a required reminder, and the crew’s inadvertent disabling of Ground Proximity Warning System alerts contributed to the mishap.” The Avationist