Leeds United squad have been ’30 seconds from blowing up’ in fireball airplane crash
A Leeds United legend has detailed his plane crash nightmare when a squad including an array of Premier League icons was subject to a hellish ordeal shortly after take-off
Leeds legend Lee Bowyer “thought he was going to die” when a squad flight crashed after take-off in 1998(Image: Stu Forster, Getty Images)
Leeds United icon Lee Bowyer has recounted the terrifying ordeal of a plane crash scare with his team-mates in 1998.
The squad were flying back to Leeds after a Premier League match against West Ham when catastrophe struck shortly after take-off. The flight carried a host of Leeds legends, including Harry Kewell, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Alfie Haaland (father of Erling), among others. However, it soon became clear the plane wouldn’t reach its intended destination in Yorkshire when one of the engines blew up, leading Bowyer to believe he “was going to die.”
Recalling the incident on The Managers podcast with Mick McCarthy and Tony Pulis, Bowyer said: “We’re in the plane, [manager] George [Graham] says, ‘You can’t stay down, you’ve gotta go back. You’re in tomorrow.’ So I’m like, ‘Okay.’ So we’re on the plane, one of them little ones you would have been on, 50-seater or whatever, little propeller things, and we’re at Stansted.
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“So obviously it’s dark because it’s been a Monday night game, we’re driving along, take-off, climbing…then all of a sudden, you hear, Bang!’ This big, massive bang. I’ve got Rod Wallace in front of me, who’s on the wing door, and obviously that’s where the engine is.
“So I’m literally sitting here, [and] I’m looking at this thing on fire. This engine on fire. It’s probably 30 yards away from me.”
Throughout Bowyer’s recounting of his near-death experience, Pulis can’t help but chuckle along. Despite McCarthy’s objections he “didn’t think we should be laughing,” Bowyer took it in good humour.
“You have to laugh, because I’m still sitting here,” he continued. “I laugh about it. So we’re still climbing and the thing’s on fire. Everyone stands up, shouting at the top of their voices, ‘Take it down! Take it down!’ It’s just gone AWOL on the plane.
“Then big Robert Molenaar, he stands up and says, ‘Everyone sit down! Calm down!’ So everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And then there’s smoke coming in now, filling up the plane with smoke, thing’s on fire, and then all of a sudden we start going down.
“But you’re constantly watching and thinking, ‘Right it’s gonna blow.’ Because you watch the movies, they blow up, and then that’s it, it’s over. But that’s the movies, and that’s what’s in my head. So now I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, that’s it. I’m gonna die.’
“And then we end up crash landing. But the front wheel, because we came down too steep, the front wheel breaks, so we go into the dirt. You can feel it bouncing, bouncing. So then now I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, we’re buried! We’re buried under the dirt!’ And the thing’s still on fire!”
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With a haze of smoke limiting visibility inside the cabin, Bowyer described the scramble to escape as a “free-for-all.” McCarthy commented that “lucky doesn’t do it justice” after a firefighter informed passengers the plane “would have blown” if it had been ablaze for another 30 seconds.
There was also a special moment of fear for then-chairman Peter Risdale, who dashed from the front of the plane to reach his son at the back. Assistant coach David O’Leary managed to force an exit door open and showed up at training the next day with his arm “bandaged like a superhero,” having apparently injured himself in the process
Bowyer also remembered how one of the directors – “a big lad,” as he put it – refused to leap from the plane until a player “booted him off” in desperation. He remained at Leeds for another five years before moving on to play for West Ham, Newcastle, Birmingham and Ipswich Town, earning a single England cap in 2002.
