Brasilia EMB-120 All Series
Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 151; Flight Crew Total 3735; Flight Crew Type 3097
Troubleshooting; Time Pressure; Confusion; Communication Breakdown; Workload
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Ground Event / Encounter Gear Up Landing; Ground Excursion Runway
Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance; Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; Flight Crew Landed in Emergency Condition; Flight Crew Requested ATC Assistance / Clarification; General Evacuated
Aircraft; Human Factors
We departed ZZZ on a Part 91 leg to ZZZ1. Reaching our initial assigned altitude from approach we were given a climb to 17;000 and that's when we lost EDC2 without making any changes to anything. We were caught totally by surprise. As a result there were several alarms and aural warnings sounding that could not be silenced. That's also when we realized that we could no longer communicate through the intercom and the First Officer had zero radio communication. We communicated through hand signals and loud talking. I was the Pilot Monitoring on this leg but I took controls at this point since I was the only one with radio communication. I pressed the autopilot disconnect button to ensure everything was disengaged and never made an attempt to reactivate it. I leveled at 14;000 and asked for a heading to troubleshoot and run the appropriate checklist. I announced that we had a failure of EDC2 and asked my First Officer to run the checklist. I couldn't hear any part of the checklist but he announced that the last step was to land as soon as practical.  I [requested priority handling] and asked for vectors back to ZZZ. I received a heading and a descent and [the] First Officer competed the appropriate checklists for descent and approach. On final approach during our before landing checklist we realized the gear did not indicate down. We aborted the landing and tried to see if the Tower controller could confirm if the gear was down or not. We made the first pass and he thought it was down but asked us to make one more pass with all the lights off in the Tower so they could try to get a better look. Again he said it looked like they were down. I considered calling for the emergency gear extension procedures but I felt a sense of urgency to get on the ground. There were several alarms sounding and we were still struggling to communicate. I was attempting to troubleshoot mentally but hand flying the airplane was my priority. At this point I realized I was getting overloaded and we still had no idea what had caused the failure in the first place. I was worried things could continue to get worse at any moment and I decided to land because so believed it was the safest thing to do. Just before touch down I recognized the gear was not down and I gently applied pressure on the power levers backwards against the flight idle stops to fully committed to the landing. At this point I knew a go around was dangerous. We touched down smoothly on centerline skidded down the runway. We finally came to a gentle halt just slightly off the runway in the grass. We ran the shutdown procedures and evacuated through the door where we were greeted by fire rescue. After walking away without even a scratch I discovered things were starting to come back to me that I couldn't seem to remember during flight. Details about the systems that I've learned in training that I could not dig out of my head while we were in flight. I've learned a lot about myself and how I react when the workload gets high and I know I can handle any future emergency better than this one. That being said; my First Officer and I were the only ones involved and we walked away completely unscathed.
EMB-120 crew suffered multiple malfunctions in flight including inoperative communications making trouble shooting difficult. Discovering gear was not down when committed to landing; in spite of ATC confirmation that it appeared down; and under pressure of deteriorating unknown conditions a successful gear up landing was made that ended off the runway.