When flight instructor Max Arns and his student took off from runway 19 at Langley Regional Airport Friday afternoon, they were expecting to have a routine flight.
That changed shortly after takeoff.
"We had an engine failure after take-off at 200 feet and we didn't have much to do, we just aimed for the softest thing that we could find," Arns told CTV News Vancouver.
That turned out to be a wooded area belonging to NATS Nursery. Arns said the Cessna 152 was too high for him to attempt a landing at the nearby Newland Golf Course.
"We tried to avoid the power lines and the high trees here," Arns said. "That's pretty much what we could do. We ran all the checklists, we called mayday. We're both OK."
Neither Arns nor his passenger were injured in the crash. He said pilots are trained regularly on what to do in the event of engine failure, but that it's a completely different experience when it's actually happening.
"I didn't have time to think, to be honest," Arns said of what was going through his mind when the engine failed. "I was thinking of making it as safe as possible."
Rod Nataros, owner of NATS Nursery, told CTV News he was happy to see that no one was hurt during the crash.
"Five feet that way would have been probably a different story," Nataros said. "A sad story."
Aerial footage from CTV News Vancouver’s Chopper 9 showed what appeared to be damage to the aircraft's left wing, but the aircraft was intact.
The Transportation Safety Board says it is assessing the incident, but will not be deploying any investigators to the scene.
Langley RCMP closed 48 Avenue between 210 and 214A streets due to a leak from the aircraft.
