Passenger will step from bike to plane at regional air show

~ The trick is performed at somewhere between 70 and 80 mph.

The crowds at this year's Cape Girardeau Regional Air Festival are guaranteed to see at least one feat of flying they probably won't see anywhere else this year.

On both days of the air festival, today and Saturday, what may be the world's only motorcycle-to-airplane transfer stunt team will give crowds a peek at their bravado.

The group calls itself Franklin's Flying Circus and features Kyle Franklin, Matt Younkin and Ryan Leach performing one of the most dangerous tricks around.

Franklin will fly an airplane with a weighted ladder dangling from it, while Younkin drives a 180-horsepower motorcycle along the runway and his passenger, Leach, climbs up the ladder onto the plane. The trick is performed at somewhere between 70 and 80 miles per hour.

Being experienced air stuntmen, team members play down the danger of their act, but they know those dangers are real.

"There's risk in anything you do, and there is risk in what you're doing here," Franklin said. "But there are a lot of factors to worry about -- wind, the speed of the motorcycle -- a lot of variables."

The Flying Circus will be just one of many offerings for the expected 10,000 who will attend over two days.

This year the schedule has changed to make the festival a two-day event instead of three days due to lagging Sunday attendance in the past. Those two days will include a "twilight show" on each night, the usual aerobatic flights, the perennial festival entertainers the Dodge Ram Jet and the 82nd Airborne Division parachute team.

The festival will also offer a B-2 stealth bomber fly-by and the West Coast A-10 Demonstration Team.

Of course, festival organizers expect all the stunts and fly-bys to go off without a hitch, and so do performers like Franklin.

The only time a team member has been injured doing a stunt, he said, was when one of the performers fell off a motorized barstool. Barstools aside, Franklin said this year's tricks should be no problem, which should create a fun experience for the performers and tricksters.

"I like entertaining people," he said. "I like entertaining the crowd, and we're there to have fun and make them have fun."

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

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Want to go?

What: Cape Girardeau Regional Air Festival

When: Today (gates open at 5:30 p.m.) and Saturday (gates open at 11 a.m.)

Where: Cape Girardeau Regional Airport

Info: 334-6230