on the ground, troopers receive a call of a road rage incident. we were pulling out into traffic to go to that other call when this all happens. they pull out on to the highway and right in the middle of bill leff s makeshift runway. they can t believe their eyes as the plane glides overhead. basically we just saw the underneath of it. there was no engine noise. its engine had seized up. it was completely silent. my first thought was he s going to crash and we re going to have a huge mess. people are going to get hurt out of this. the plane speeds toward trooper linak s cruiser up ahead. it was almost an instant reaction to kind of duck and brace. when i looked out the windshield, all i saw was the bottom of the airplane. the pilot s wheels touch down and he lands the plane on the highway. so you are just standing on the brakes trying to stop and hope you don t hit something. i was waiting for the impact, the crunch. the troopers create a moving roadblock to halt tr
is heavy with people en route to the air show. state trooper scott linak is on the shoulder of the road helping a disabled vehicle. i was dispatched for a motor home with a flat tire. we were trying to get as many people as we could to move over to give him space to change the tire. just behind rookie trooper chris and his supervisor luke newman assist linak. when you turn your lights on, your camera goes on. we were providing lights for trooper linak and normally you d turn your camera off. but being that i was new to the job, i forgot to turn the camera off. up above, bill leff frantically scopes out the highway and formulates a plan for his emergency landing. there was a space of 8 to 10 car lengths that basically looked like a moving runway to me. so my thought was, if i could land in that space, the cars behind me will stop and the cars in front of me will keep going so i ought to be able to stop before i get to them.
people as we could to move over to give him space to change the tire. just behind rookie trooper chris and his supervisor luke newman assist linak. when you turn your lights on, your camera goes on. we were providing lights for trooper linak and normally you d turn your camera off. but being that i was new to the job, i forgot to turn the camera off. up above, bill leff frantically scopes out the highway and formulates a plan for his emergency landing. there was a space of 8 to 10 car lengths that basically looked like a moving runway to me. so my thought was, if i could land in that space, the cars behind me will stop and the cars in front of me will keep going so i ought to be able to stop before i get to them. on the ground, troopers receive a call of a road rage incident. we were pulling out into traffic to go to that other call when this all happens. they pull out on to the
in one piece and did not hit any cars. this could have been a major disaster. a lot of vehicles with all that fuel and everything else there could have been horrendous accident. this is probably the best outcome we could have had of any other possibility we could think of. bill leff and his son exit the plane feeling lucky to be alive. the trooper greets them at the wing. he just stopped and said you really scared me. i said, well, yeah, kind of scared me, too. he didn t seem excited about the situation at all like they land on highways every day. bill calls his wife before she sees him on the news. i could have lost both of them at one time, so both my husband and my son. that s a scary, scary moment for me. but those driving on highway 41 that day will never forget when they witnessed their own up close and personal air show. watch the video now. you re like wow. still hard to believe that happened and nobody got hurt. this is once in a career kind
pilot bill leff has been flying airplanes for more than four decades. flying is a great thing. you become part of the airplane and it becomes an extension of you. and that s what s great about flying. it s just the freedom of it. he does more than just fly. he wows crowds across the globe, performing death-defying stunts at air shows. i do loops and rolls and things called cuban 8s which are two loops back to back. i will admit there are moments in that in his air show career that have scared me. he can lose his life doing this if he s not careful. leff s plane of choice is his 1943 t-6 texan. these historic planes were used during world war ii to train fighter pilots. it was called the t-6 texan because it was built in dallas, texas. designed in the late 1930s. i was looking for an airplane that i could do aerobatics with. it s been a great airplane. july 22nd, 2007.