You'd gain nothing, they can already see it with their eyeballs, and they don't require anything else like faster response or a different viewpoint. You'd lose in terms of putting another hole in the aircraft and maintaining another system, and you'd still need the manual procedure in case the camera didn't work.

>and you'd still need the manual procedure in case the camera didn't work.

And presumably if the camera doesn't work as part of the pre-flight checklist for whatever reason, you're not going anywhere until it's fixed/replaced.

camera would probably just get an INOP sticker put somewhere, a surprising number of things can be nonfunctional on an airplane before it's grounded.

part of it is that there's a backup for most everything required.

....how can they see the area where the front gear is from within the plane?

The people in the airplane ask the people on the ground to look at it for them.

The pilots "see" it with sensors.

The tower sees it with a set of binoculars. Hopefully.

> You'd gain nothing, they can already see it with their eyeballs

I'm talking about things they can't see, which I've heard in recordings as well.

For something like this they'd gain something for sure - time and redundancy

Why is the current time and redundancy requirement insufficient? They had plenty of time and opportunities to look at it, and they succeeded with time to spare. What is the scenario where they would run out of time, and why couldn't they land assuming that the landing gear wasn't deployed?

You'd need potentially an unrealistic number of cameras. Even if you decide on a case by case basis, you still have to weigh the risk that every component adds, and with a finite amount of money to spend on risk reduction you want to get the most bang for your buck.

> Why is the current time and redundancy requirement insufficient?

I'm operating under the belief that more time to respond to issues is always a plus. Do you disagree?

More time to respond is a plus. Adding hardware is a minus.

Good enough is good enough.

> Adding hardware is a minus.

It's a cost, which is why I'm trying to understand what the ROI would be.

> Good enough is good enough.

In cases like this, yes, but ... planes do crash due to mechanical failure and it's not unusual for there to be confusion from instrumentation where visual confirmation could help.

I'm sure there are at least a few camera placements that would be worthwhile.

To answer your earlier question, not to split hairs, but I disagree with "always". You can inadvertently increase risk when trying to reduce it, or unwittingly prioritize things that offer less bang for your buck. That's why risk analysis is important.

I don't disagree that adding data can increase risk. I'm just not seeing the argument against exterior cameras.

I think it's probably just considered not worthwhile enough at the moment. We'll probably get them one day. Rockets have cameras, after all.

I want to be clear I'm agreeing with you that some cameras would be useful in general. I think my only disagreements are that eyeballs are fine for this scenario, and that "more" isn't always meaningfully useful or necessarily better.

A lot of aircraft could do this but the rules are most likely the same for the majority of air planes large and small.

Newer aircraft have external cameras that can be pulled up on screens in the cockpit.