Flight Crew Flight Instructor; Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 50; Flight Crew Total 6500; Flight Crew Type 90
Confusion; Other / Unknown
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical
Flight Crew Requested ATC Assistance / Clarification
Procedure
Had an unsafe nose gear indication and asked for a fly by of Tower to have them look. They said gear appeared down but they could not confirm locked. Recycled the gear and made another fly by; still appeared down. Had no green light for nose-normal green for mains; red unlocked light was on; used back up blow down system the try make gear lock; no change in indications. [I] advised Tower to contact Local Repair Shop to come out and standby if gear collapsed and to move aircraft from runway. At this time the airport had one runway closed for construction and only one runway was open. Advised Tower that after landing; one of two things would happen; either the gear would collapse or it would stay down. In the event it stayed down I would shutdown on runway and have shop block gear down before towing aircraft. On final I heard the Tower give an air carrier taxi instructions. I told Tower I could go around and let the carrier out as I did not want to block the only operational runway. Tower also asked if I would like to have the fire trucks standing by and told them OK. They said to go ahead and land. I did so and the gear held. I shut down both engines and was able to coast clear of the runway. The shop blocked the gear down and towed that aircraft to the hangar. A few hours later I got a call from the FSDO; they wanted me to submit a log entry showing the problem as being fixed. I have never in 40 years of flying had this type of request. I called the Tower later and asked them why and how the FSDO was notified. They said new FAA policy was that anything like this had to have an MOR report that is sent to FSDO and entered in a data base. The FSDO office then contacted ATC who told me this incident was listed as an Emergency on the MOR. At no time did I declare an emergency or ask for any type of priority handling. My concern is that the Tower declared this an emergency when it was not. What happened to the concept of 'pilot in command'? Had this happened at an uncontrolled airport there would have been nothing done and no report filed. There seems to be a policy in place that is going to make pilots feel that their every move is watched and being questioned. This is going lead to distrust of the system and pilots not making proper decisions if they think that it will lead to possible enforcement actions or second guessing of decisions made in the aircraft.
General Aviation aircraft experiencing landing gear difficulties questioned ATC's 'emergency' declaration that resulted in inquiries from the local FAA FSDO.