20260726010079I

On 07/26/2026 at 1215 PDT, a Cessna 310 airplane departed on a part 91 flight with the purpose of conducting a commercial multi-engine checkride. There were two persons on board - the checkride pilot (PIC) and the designated pilot examiner (DPE).

The aircraft departed Perkins feild airport (U08) in Overton, NV from runway 14 to fly over the north end of lake mead to conduct the required maneuvers. During the power off stall maneuver, the pilots noticed the left main gear light was not indicating when they lowered the gear to perform the maneuver. Since they weren’t landing and it wasn’t an emergency, they decided to make a note and retract the gear to finish the maneuvers until the gear were needed again.

The aircraft then proceeded towards mesquite airport (67L) to perform an instrument approach. During the approach the PIC attempted to bring down the gear and then noticed the same left main gear was not indicating. The DPE asked the PIC to abort the approach so they could troubleshoot. They tried recycling the gear. They switched out the gear light bulbs to see if the left main was burned out. Still no gear down indication on the left main. So they decided to return to the Perkins Field area.

En route to U08 airport, the DPE took over the controls while the PIC pulled out the pilots operating handbook (POH) to review the aircraft’s gear emergency procedure. The PIC read through the procedure out loud to the DPE about 3-4 times before they actually did anything to make sure they were on the same page and that they both understood the procedures. They then performed the emergency gear down procedure as stated in the POH, but were still not getting any indication that the left main gear was down and locked.

The pilots then decided to call the airplane’s manager to ask his thoughts. Still no indications. The aircraft manager called the mechanic who works on the plane and he came out to the airfield with a handheld radio.

While waiting for the mechanic to arrive, the pilots decided to try and recycle the gear one last time. This time there was an obvious noise with the gear motor that they never heard before. It was at that point they decided that something was definitely wrong, so they went through the manual procedure to put the gear down and this time they were not getting locked down indications on both the left and right main gear. The nose gear was the only indication. At this point the DPE handed control of the aircraft back over to the PIC.

When the mechanic arrived to the airfield, the pilots flew a low pass over runway 14 at about 200 feet in which the mechanic verified the landing gear were down and straight but unable to determine locked position.

The pilots made the decision to land the aircraft. The landing approach and touchdown was centerline and light. After a few seconds of weight on wheels, the main gear started to slowly collapse. Eventually the belly of the aircraft contacted the runway causing aircraft to veer left and come to rest in the off-runway gravel. The props did not touch the ground.

After shutting down the aircraft, the pilots egressed uneventfully with no injuries. (This report may be amended at a future date)