Plane With Malfunctioning Gear Lands Safely : Aircraft: The pilot and his passenger manage to guide it onto a dirt field near runway at John Wayne Airport.

The pilot of a private aircraft with malfunctioning landing gear circled John Wayne Airport for an hour Monday afternoon before he and a fellow passenger guided the plane to a successful landing, officials said.

The pilot and owner of the 1960 Piper Comanche, Barry T. Faber, 64, of Newport Beach, was trying to manually retract the plane’s landing gear as his passenger and co-pilot, Ray Tedford, guided the plane into 25 m.p.h. southerly winds and onto a dirt field just north of the airport’s runway, fire officials said.

Faber contacted the airport’s control tower just before 1 p.m. after he noticed a gauge indicating an electrical problem, said Capt. Dan Young of the Orange County Fire Department. As he circled the airport, Faber tried unsuccessfully to extend the plane’s landing gear, airport and fire officials said.

Faber then began talking via radio with a mechanic at Martin Aviation at John Wayne Airport, where the plane is based, Young said. Faber and the mechanic went through various procedures to lower the plane’s landing gear, Young said.

But Faber could not move the landing gear mechanically and instead decided to try to fully retract the landing gear manually, Young said, so that he and Tedford could do a belly landing.

As Faber was pulling the landing gear into the belly of the plane, Tedford, 55, of Garden Grove, guided it onto a dirt field, where the plane skidded about 30 feet before coming to a stop.

Both men stepped out of the plane unhurt as firefighters hosed the aircraft with fire-retardant foam, Young said.

The four-seat, single-propeller plane “didn’t skip or cartwheel or any of that stuff that you worry about,” Young said. “It was very uneventful, which is what we like.”

Joe Fowler, tower manager, said he closed the runway to air traffic for about 10 minutes, causing two inbound flights to delay their final approaches. The runway reserved for commercial flights was not affected, he said.

Faber, Tedford and Martin Aviation officials were not available for comment after the landing.