Landing on a Wing and Answered Prayer

Shayna Gove did not think she would end up praying for her life when she agreed to accompany her uncle, Matthew Arns, in his two-seat experimental airplane for a Saturday sightseeing flight over Orange County.

But that’s all she could do when Arns, who lives in Irvine, said: “We have a problem, I think.”

Gove, 20, of Westminster, remained quiet, allowing her uncle to concentrate on the emergency landing, while she silently prayed: “God, please land this plane!”

Her prayers were answered.

After bouncing across a dirt road by a motocross park and hitting a small post near the shore of Irvine Lake, the single-engine plane finally came to rest at water’s edge.

Both Gove and Arns walked away from the Space Walker II, a $25,000 kit plane Arns put together and has flown for five years.

After taking off from the Chino airport, they had been aloft about 20 minutes when Gove heard the plane’s engine sputtering. Arns was piloting from the rear seat and struggled to gain altitude, but the engine would not respond.

“I figured we’d be OK. There just wasn’t room to land it in that place,” Arns said afterward.

The dirt road was not long enough to allow the plane to come to a smooth stop, and they ended up with half the airplane, nose-first, in the water, its left wing damaged.

Arns helped his niece out of the plane.

Aside from a bruised knee and the momentary shock of the forced landing, she was unhurt.

This was the first time Arns has made an emergency landing. He said it wouldn’t discourage him from experimental airplanes.

Although still somewhat shaken by the accident some hours later, Arns said he was confident he had made the right decision at a critical time to land near the shore of Lake Irvine.

“We were going to have to put it down someplace,” said Arns, who has been piloting airplanes for recreation for 25 years.