The pilot of a small twin-engine plane had a bit of a jolt Wednesday when he attempted to land at Slidell Airport.

Norman Collins, 52, was bringing his 1969 Beechcraft Duke in for a landing about 12:30 p.m. As he approached the runway, he went through the normal maneuvers to deploy his landing gear. Instead of the normal whirr of machinery, however, he heard a loud pop and instantly smelled smoke. He checked his instrument panel, and noticed only one of the three indicator lights for the gear was glowing.

With more than 20 years of flight experience, Collins fell back on his training. He switched the power off and then on again, but only the left landing wheel came down. The pilot knew he was in for a rough ride. “I had to switch off everything but the main power, and coast in as slow as possible,” said Collins. “As soon as the right side touched down I ran off the runway.”

The plane skidded about 50 feet before stopping. The nose cone came off and the right-hand prop was bent, but Collins was unhurt, as was his cargo, 500 pounds of argon gas.

Collins was transporting the gas to a refinery. An inert gas, argon is non-toxic, but could cause asphyxiation if enough is ingested.

“It’s what’s called a ‘shielding’ gas, and they use it in welding projects,” said Capt. Kevin Foltz of the Slidell Police Department. “It was packaged up really well, and it’s not toxic, but we’ve got a lot of wind out here today, so there might have been some problems if it was damaged.”

With the plane sitting on the edge of the runway, Administrative Secretary Felicia Carpenter issued a Notice to Airmen, or NOTAM, advising them not to land until the runway was cleared of debris and the plane was moved. Thirty minutes later, the notice was lifted.

“We’ve had a few small incidents like this over the years, but nothing serious,” said Carpenter. “The most important thing is that there were no injuries.”

This was the Texas-based pilot’s first crash, and he aims to make it his only one.

“Any time you can walk away from a crash, that’s a good thing,” said Collins. “This could have gone a lot worse.”