NEW MELLE, Mo.-
A cut below her nose was the only injury 78-year-old Emma Hanner suffered after the engine in her small plane quit, forcing her to land in a field west of St. Louis.
The propeller on the two-seat 1970 Grumman AA1 stopped suddenly in flight Thursday, forcing the grandmother of five to bring it down in a muddy farm field near New Melle.
“It just quit,” said Hanner, who recently moved to Denver from Lexington, N.C., to be closer to her children. She had returned to Lexington to ferry the plane to Denver.
Fortunately, there were plenty of open spaces below her.
As the plane hit the ground, one wheel dipped into an irrigation ditch and buckled. That bent the plane’s nose down and spun it around, jolting her forward with her face hitting the steering yoke, Hanner said.
A passer-by called police. The Federal Aviation Administration will investigate.
In nearly four decades of flying, Hanner said she has never before made an emergency landing.
She said she flies a couple of times a week and plans to fly again. But she worried about what her children would say now.
Daughter Carol Hanner, an editor at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, said the family won’t ground her, at least not yet.
“We will wait for the official findings before we have that family discussion,” she said.
Carol Hanner said her mother caught the flying bug after her son learned to fly at 15. The son, Dale Hanner, was in the Air Force and is now a commercial pilot.
Emma Hanna said she plans to have her plane repaired in Missouri and fly it home to Denver. She described it as “like a Cessna 150, but it’s got a bigger engine—more powerful.”
“I love that plane,” she said.
