When you hear that a plane and a car nearly collided while the aircraft was landing, if you’re anything like us at The Drive, you probably picture some sort of emergency-landing-on-a-highway scenario, or a situation where a plane runs into one of the many authorized wheeled vehicles usually found scurrying around the tarmac at airports. What you probably don’t picture is a random car plowing across a runway ahead of a plane in the split second before it lands, all but guaranteeing a collision.
That, presumably, is because you don’t live in Russia, a magical land where anything can happen when it comes to transportation. Barges drag trucks away. Fighter jets bomb ice dams. And Ladas suddenly appear on empty runways as pilots try to land their Cessnas.
According to the Daily Mail, the pilot of the single-engine Cessna 172 was coming in for a landing at a quiet airfield in the town of Bolgar, which is located in the semi-autonomous region of Russia known as Tatarstan, when a silver Lada largus popped out from an access road and drove straight into the plane’s path. Luckily for everyone involved, the pilot accessed his or her reserves of Chuck Yeager-esque cool and hopped the small plane over the SUV without so much as a peep of concern.
Well done, good sir or madam. We at The Drive can only assume that all those years playing photo subject for America’s finest aviatiors helped you hone those catlike reflexes. And here’s hoping you gave that Lada driver a severe ass-whupping stern talking-talking once you were on the ground.