Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 150; Flight Crew Total 12000; Flight Crew Type 4000
Situational Awareness
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Maintenance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
Flight Crew Overcame Equipment Problem
Aircraft; Procedure
When we attempted to lower the landing gear on final nothing happened. After we unsuccessfully cycled the landing gear lever three times we elected to do a go around and trouble shoot. After checking in the Flight Manual; checking for popped circuit breakers; and consulting with Maintenance we prepared for our return and successfully performed the Gravity Extension checklist on a long final.  During the conversation with Maintenance Control we were told that the same thing had happened eleven days previously. In our maintenance history the last entry went back thirteen days but there was no entry for the previous gear malfunction. This knowledge could have been quite beneficial. Our initial fuel load had us planned to land with 4.8 thousand pounds of fuel. Luckily we had increased this by 1;000 pounds prior to departure. Had we not increased the fuel load we would have had very little fuel time left to further troubleshoot our problem if the gravity extension was not successful.
An A320 flight crew was unable to lower their landing gear; initiated a go around; successfully conducted a gravity extension procedure and returned for a safe landing. Their fuel remaining could have compromised more extensive trouble shooting had the gravity extension not proven successful. A previous identical failure some 11 days before was not annotated in the logbook or in the flight crew's maintenance briefing message provided for flight planning.