No-retraction reaction
Dealing with unresponsive flaps
By Travis Bender
Every time I fly, I brief abnormal situations on the ground prior to departure, but on this day, I was thrown a unique situation that I had not dealt with before, let alone thought of.
What happened
Around 800 feet agl, my friend asked if I raised the flaps, as they were still deployed. I checked the flap lever, and it indicated zero degrees, meaning we now had flaps that wouldn’t come up.
Flapless
Could you make a no-flaps landing in your training airplane? Or a landing in a flap configuration other than full? Practice landing in these configurations, in the event you experience a malfunction that precludes you from landing in the preferred configuration.
Flaps might fail to extend or retract, but they can also extend asymmetrically—one up and one down. The left flap comes down while the right one remains in place when the flap switch is deployed. The extended left flap would increase the angle of attack of the left wing, rolling the airplane to the right. More lift means more induced drag from that down flap, so simultaneously with the right roll the airplane would yaw to the left. You’d push right rudder to counter the yaw and roll out of the bank with left aileron, and likely lower the nose to be safe. Then, if the flap does not retract, you must concentrate on maneuvering for landing while flying cross-controlled.
I was flying a Cessna 152 with another pilot friend to work on commercial maneuvers. Wanting to do a soft-field takeoff, I added 10 degrees of flaps and followed the proper takeoff procedure.
Climbing past 200 feet above ground level (agl), I retracted flaps and prepared to leave the airport area. Passing 500 feet I noticed the airplane wasn’t climbing at its usual climb rate, but after checking the engine gauges, I attributed it to the 152 being an underpowered trainer.
Around 800 feet, after tower told me to switch to Approach, my friend asked if I raised the flaps, as they were still deployed. I checked the flap lever, and it indicated zero degrees, meaning we now had flaps that wouldn’t come up.
I knew that the situation wasn’t hazardous at the moment, so I stopped climbing at 1,000 feet to preserve speed. Flaps still hadn’t retracted, and I thought about lowering them to 20 degrees to see if they came up after, but then realized how that could make things worse and just decided to leave them at 10 degrees. With speed and altitude under control, I called ATC to let them know I was coming back because of a stuck flap issue.
On landing, I decided to leave flaps at 10 degrees and not lower them. It’s a 152, so I knew I had no problems landing on the 2,600-foot-long runway, but I pulled power more than normal and allowed the airplane to slow down on final. I used pitch and some trim to help manage speed as well. I gave myself a go-around point, and touched down uneventfully, except for the fire trucks on the taxiways. Seeing the trucks was probably the strangest part of the flight, given I had practiced no-flap landings before.
Debriefing with the flight school staff, I realized I made one mistake. I should have moved the lever back to 10 degrees for landing. Why? Well, if the flaps magically came back to life, they would’ve instantly raised to 0 degrees. On short final at 100 feet agl, the loss of lift from the flaps retracting could have made things a lot trickier.
Maintenance looked at the airplane after the flight and found that the flap’s microswitch was faulty. They replaced the part, and the airplane has been flying great since then.
Looking back at the situation, I feel my responsiveness and problem-solving were decent. No scenario is perfect, and for me, I learned a great lesson about the flap lever on landing. As a pilot, every flight is an opportunity to gain a new insight, and this day was no exception.
