Peter Facinelli's sky-high proposal was almost lost in the clouds

Peter Facinelli's romantic Empire State Building proposal was almost an expensive disaster when his girlfriend told him she was leaving the viewing deck to escape the New York chill.

The Twilight star hired a plane to fly above the Big Apple landmark last month (Mar15) with his banner proposal to Thor actress Jaimie Alexander, but when the magic moment came, so many things came close to ruining it.

Five minutes before the timed fly-over, Alexander told her now-fiance she was going inside, and he adds, "All of a sudden I look up when she went in and the plane was there!"

He dragged the actress back out but lost the plane in the clouds.

He tells People magazine, "I had binoculars and I looked up and I saw a helicopter, and I looked and couldn't find it (the plane), because I was nervous that it had left, and then I gave the binoculars to her and she goes, 'Yeah, it's right there', and then she read the banner so it worked out."

Facinelli began dating Alexander in 2012, shortly after he split from ex-wife Jennie Garth.