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Forget the Mile-High Club, Try the Mile-Engagement Club

Finally, a good-news air travel story: Love in the air.

ByABC News
April 11, 2012, 1:05 PM

April 13, 2012 — -- Heard enough air travel horror stories? You might be heartened to learn that good things, too, happen on airplanes -- specifically, love.

Willy Scully-Power met Maia Stier, the woman who would become his girlfriend, on a 2011 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney.

"I looked up and there she was, sort of walking down the aisle," Power remembered. "And she ended up sitting next to me, and uh, we spent ten hours on the flight..."

"...Just chatting. Learning everything about each other," Stier said, finishing her beau's sentence. "Yeah, it was really cool."

Scully-Power, an Australian, was so inspired by his own in-flight love story that he started a website geared toward passengers searching for people they met -- but never got contact information for -- on plane trips.

Watch the full story on "20/20: Just Plane Crazy" online.

Launched in January, wemetonaplane.com has posted thousands of stories from more than 60 countries.

With more than 300,000 page views in the last few months, Powell expects it's only a matter of time before the site has its first successful match.

"We're really excited for ... the first day we get that first successful connection," he said.

But when it comes to tales of romantic intrigue, an in-flight meeting might not hold a candle to sealing the deal on an aircraft. Just ask Derek Walker.

"My heart was pounding," he told "20/20" correspondent John Berman. "It's one of those things that so many pieces had to fall into place for it to really work out perfectly.

In the last two years, Walker, 23, a graduate student at New York University, has become a bit of an Internet celebrity.

In 2010, he was planning to pop the question to his girlfriend Amanda Hallsted. Like many a would-be fiance, Walker wanted to make his proposal unique...but it was his mother who ultimately came up with an unorthodox plan: proposing on a Delta Air Lines plane using the public address system during a family trip from Utah to Arizona.

Walker said he had his doubts.

"I was like, well, I don't know if that would really work...With the heightened security and stuff, I thought there was no way they would let us use the PA system," he said.

They called the airline ahead of time but Delta made no promises, Walker said.

"They said, 'Well, we don't have anything specifically against something like that, but it's completely up to the crew once you get there,'" he said.

When Walker and Hallsted boarded the plane, Walkers' family -- who was flying with them -- sprang into action. While Walker stayed with Hallsted, his mother asked -- and got enthusiastic permission -- from the crew for use of the PA system. Then Walker's teenage brother, Justin, played his part.

Justin, then 16, was known for doing comedic impressions, so the two brothers crafted a scheme: Walker would dare Justin, in front of Hallsted, to do a funny voice over the PA system. Once Justin got a hold of the PA system, he would turn the supposed prank into a proposal on behalf of his brother.

Justin began with some improv, impersonating a movie trailer announcer: "In a world where one man dares to be compassionate, this June, witness the story of love, desire and passion."

When Amanda Hallsted heard Justin's voice booming through the aircraft, she began laughing at what she thought was just the teen fulfilling a dare. But with his next sentence, she suddenly realized the announcement was meant for her.

"Amanda Hallsted, will you marry Derek Walker?"

With those words, Walker was kneeling on the ground in front of Hallsted, ring in hand.