Walking away without injury from a plane crash in the middle of a cornfield during a snowstorm would be enough to make most people think twice about flying again.

But not Brad Lenz.

Lenz, an Ames resident, was one of seven people who walked away from Wednesday night’s crash scene, where a twin-engine plane struck power lines and went down in a cornfield about a half mile from the runway at the Ames Municipal Airport.

“It wasn’t as crazy as you think,” said Lenz, 33, a project manager for Manatt, Inc.

The downed plane was registered to Manatt, a company based in Brooklyn, Iowa.

“I don’t know exactly what happened, but it didn’t seem out of the ordinary. It was just a regular landing until it got a little rough,” Lenz said.

The Federal Aviation Administration investigated the scene Thursday, said Steve Salvo, operations administrator for the Ames Municipal Airport. No results of the investigation were available at press time.

The plane, which was scheduled to land in Ames, was returning from a five-day ski trip on Copper Mountain in Colorado, Lenz said. On its abrupt descent, the plane damaged 30 Alliant Energy power poles and cross-arms, leaving about 100 customers in the dark the rest of Wednesday night and into early Thursday, said John Ruff, Alliant spokesperson.

“Our crews had to go out and rebuild that line and all 30 lines last night in order to restore power by this morning,” he said. “There wasn’t any way to reroute power to get it restored faster.”

Alliant has not yet estimated the cost of rebuilding the power lines, Ruff said.

Likewise, Lenz said he does not know how much it will cost to fix the plane, which he said may be “about totaled.”

“I don’t have any estimate at all, but it’s a lot of damage,” said Lenz, who has worked for Manatt for eight years. “Both wings, the tail and the landing gear were damaged.”

The snowy weather may have played a role in the plane crash, although Salvo said it is too early to determine the extent of the weather’s effect.

Either way, the crash ended a trip to the slopes that Lenz is not likely to forget.

“It happened so fast that I was more worried at the end that it would roll over,” he said. “But it came to a nice stop, and it wasn’t as scary as you’d think.”