How fast were you going? Sounds like you were going too fast for the landing gear to handle the impact force. You should also be slightly pitched up when you make contact with the ground instead of flat, so as to not overstress the forward wheel(s) or even flip forward over them.
I wasn't looking at the moment of impact, but I'm guessing it was between 100 and 200 meters per second. Also, using the very cheapest tier 1 plane parts, so the landing gear wasn't that great.
Yeah, I remember you had to progress past that point so the vehicle would quit exploding while you were trying to take off. The engine does not like collisions, and considers driving a constant series of collisions.
Trying to land at night might be easier. You can't actually see the runway, but the lights make it obvious where you need to go. Touching anything that isn't runway is like 90% chance of full vehicle destruction, though. Staying on the runway can reduce that to like 25% if you're good.
After overcoming some of the "symmetrical doesn't mean it's symmetrical" difficulties in the game, I got more ambitious. My other self-challenge of "how many go to space contracts can I complete during one rocket flight" went disastrously. Even with a rocket weighted to be heavier on the bottom, with gigantic fins set to rifle the rocket to keep it upright, and 0-3 (I tried a lot of combinations) Advanced Stabilizers, it starts somersaulting fairly early. That was any flight trying to use the hitchhiker storage container. I was hoping to use that experience to get a manned science satellite into orbit, but I was stuck building planes that exploded or rockets that kept spinning out of control, and couldn't advance any further. Trying to plan any flight more difficult than a trip around the moon meant my window of opportunity had ended before I finished planning. Then I modded the game with the auto science and autopilot stuff, and somehow everything flew even worse.
The game was good for ~5 hours, then I hit a wall and a pile of things that didn't seem to work right, and all of the community help was that I was playing wrong with no advice. Or the symmetrical rocket was unbalanced, so I needed to balance it by. (I'm kidding. They didn't get halfway to suggesting a fix.) At least the new game will have the same bad engine, with prettier art.
I mean, random turning on the runway is still an issue, but landing works just fine now. I haven't tested extensively, but wheels have only given me issues when driving a car with physics warp on.
Oh shit, physics warp or "make everything explode" mode.