PA-23 Apache/Geronimo Apache
Flight Crew Private
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 9; Flight Crew Total 118; Flight Crew Type 9
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Ground Event / Encounter Ground Strike - Aircraft; Ground Event / Encounter Loss Of Aircraft Control; Ground Excursion Runway
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; Flight Crew Took Evasive Action; General Flight Cancelled / Delayed; General Maintenance Action
Aircraft
I am a private pilot; multi-engine student. I was working with my instructor on a variety of things that morning in the practice area. We came back to the airport and proceeded to perform some touch and go landings on Runway XX; left traffic. We performed two touch and go landings; then a full stop landing. We taxied back and performed two more touch and go landings before the tower asked us to switch to right traffic (five landings in total). On downwind; the nose gear light didn't come on immediately. The hydraulic lever would kick back telling us it was pressurized and I had visual confirmation that the front gear was down.We performed three more touch and go landings to do our best to confirm that the gear was down and locked. I recall the nose gear light would flicker from time to time. We performed the checklist items accordingly but could not get the nose light to stay on when extending the gear. Every time the hydraulic gear lever would return to neutral and the gear was visible in the mirror.  My instructor requested to the tower that we switch to the non active Runway (XY) so that he could land and get out to see what was going on with the gear. With the instructor flying; he chose to feather the left engine after the gear was lowered. No flaps were used. Upon landing; he shutdown the right engine. The plane initially acted normal but started to veer to the right as we continued down the runway. I could feel that he had very little directional control. He also has no brakes on the right seat position so he yelled 'left brake!; left brake!' I pushed the left brake as hard as I could and the plane turned left enough to stay on the runway; however shortly thereafter the nose gear collapsed. We skidded to a stop; shut everything down and exited the plane. The right engine hadn't stopped in time so the prop was damaged from contacting the runway. The left engine was feathered so there didn't appear to be any damage to it. The plane was removed from the non active runway and brought back to the hangar. I have no idea what we could have done differently as we had hydraulic pressure and visual confirmation that the gear was down (bad switch?). The previous touch and go landings were fine with no adverse steering issues. Perhaps the nose gear wasn't getting a lot of contact during the touch and goes but I still had directional control prior to him landing. Feathering the left engine obviously saved that from damage. The intent was to only gently land and inspect prior to taxing back to the hangar; but due to other circumstances the plane veered right; was corrected with left brake and the nose gear still ended up collapsing.
PA-23 Pilot reported a main gear failure and runway excursion on landing.