Narrative:

About six seconds after selecting the gear handle to the up position we received a triple chime master warning with red 'gear disagree' and 'nose door' warning messages along with 'nose door' aural warning. The QRH directed us to put the gear down by using the manual extension handle and the gear handle and land at the nearest suitable airport. Approach gave us about thirty minutes of vectors so we could burn off enough fuel to land below maximum landing weight. We returned to the departure airport and deplaned the passengers. Local maintenance took the aircraft. Upon sharing my story with two captains later in the day; I discovered a belief among the pilots at our air carrier that maintenance is lacking on our aircraft. I share this belief. The attrition rate among our mechanics is alarming. I also heard that this particular gear problem (nose gear not retracting) has been happening with increasing frequency lately. This is my second gear malfunction in as many weeks and my third gear malfunction in about six years. Two weeks ago I got a gear disagree when lowering the gear on a flight. The left main took about twice as long as it should have on the down cycle. Add to this the company's willingness to extend and schedule pilots to the maximum extent duty and rest regulations allow: I believe there is a serious degradation of the culture of safety at our air carrier. I suspect that our air carrier is doctoring or otherwise pencil whipping maintenance records and fatigue call rates in an effort to keep the FAA off its back. With very few exceptions; there appears to be nothing illegal happening. I have heard of scheduling retroactively changing duty-in times or changing block times to 'make things legal.' I have personally seen the company schedule flights that overlap to make a duty day appear legal. So why should the FAA interfere? Someone needs to. Our air carrier is an airline waiting to drive an airplane into the ground somewhere. I've discovered that this fear is shared among many pilots at our air carrier across all seniority levels and among the leadership of our union officers. The abysmal pilot manning situation is not getting any better. And air carrier's 'innovative' cost savings on maintenance is beginning to show up in degraded dispatch reliability and a spike in landing gear malfunctions. The complacency among the pilots; the union; the corporate leadership; and the FAA is disgusting. We are not supposed to be waiting around for someone to die. We are supposed to be safety-minded and proactive. I have family who live in three cities heavily served by our air carrier. I am on the verge of telling them to avoid flying on our air carrier at all costs. I implore the safety committee to do something

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A CRJ200 EICAS alerted GEAR DISAGREE and NOSE DOOR after takeoff. The QRH was completed and the flight returned to the departure airport. The reporter elaborates why he believes that Maintenance and air carrier policies contribute to an unsafe situation at the airline.

Narrative: About six seconds after selecting the gear handle to the UP position we received a Triple Chime Master Warning with red 'GEAR DISAGREE' and 'NOSE DOOR' warning messages along with 'NOSE DOOR' aural warning. The QRH directed us to put the gear down by using the manual extension handle and the gear handle and land at the nearest suitable airport. Approach gave us about thirty minutes of vectors so we could burn off enough fuel to land below maximum landing weight. We returned to the departure airport and deplaned the passengers. Local Maintenance took the aircraft. Upon sharing my story with two Captains later in the day; I discovered a belief among the pilots at our air carrier that maintenance is lacking on our aircraft. I share this belief. The attrition rate among our mechanics is alarming. I also heard that this particular gear problem (nose gear not retracting) has been happening with increasing frequency lately. This is my second gear malfunction in as many weeks and my third gear malfunction in about six years. Two weeks ago I got a GEAR DISAGREE when lowering the gear on a flight. The left main took about twice as long as it should have on the down cycle. Add to this the company's willingness to extend and schedule pilots to the maximum extent duty and rest regulations allow: I believe there is a serious degradation of the culture of safety at our air carrier. I suspect that our air carrier is doctoring or otherwise pencil whipping maintenance records and fatigue call rates in an effort to keep the FAA off its back. With very few exceptions; there appears to be nothing illegal happening. I have heard of scheduling retroactively changing duty-in times or changing block times to 'make things legal.' I have personally seen the company schedule flights that overlap to make a duty day appear legal. So why should the FAA interfere? Someone needs to. Our air carrier is an airline waiting to drive an airplane into the ground somewhere. I've discovered that this fear is shared among many pilots at our air carrier across all seniority levels and among the leadership of our union officers. The abysmal pilot manning situation is not getting any better. And air carrier's 'innovative' cost savings on maintenance is beginning to show up in degraded dispatch reliability and a spike in landing gear malfunctions. The complacency among the pilots; the union; the corporate leadership; and the FAA is disgusting. We are not supposed to be waiting around for someone to die. We are supposed to be safety-minded and proactive. I have family who live in three cities heavily served by our air carrier. I am on the verge of telling them to avoid flying on our air carrier at all costs. I implore the safety committee to do something

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.