Hundreds of planes streak across the skies of the Northeast every day, but Jeff Marshall’s is the one that routinely makes other pilots holler “What was that?” to the nearest air-traffic controller. The latter, of course, know exactly what “that” is: A modified L-39 military jet, purchased 12 years ago from the Czech government by this venture capitalist with some seriously dominant flight genes.
“I can get to Boston in 17 minutes,” says Marshall, who heads there twice a week from his home in Stamford, Connecticut. “The jet is pretty fuel-efficient — it burns only 200 gallons an hour.” (Hey, by comparison, an F-16 burns nearly 1,700.) Before taking the craft aloft, Marshall had custom-made avionics and extended fuel tanks installed; the FAA designates it an “experimental jet,” which sounds much less intimidating than “aircraft designed for light-attack missions.”
A managing partner for the CRT Capital Group, which invests
in telecommunications and clean technologies, the 52-year-old has been flying jets since he was a teenager, making him more than qualified to handle a highly maneuverable tactical fighter/trainer with a max-level speed of close to 470 mph. (Just in case the unthinkable should happen, though, the craft Marshall bought used
for $360,000 has two fully functioning ejection seats.)
When he can’t get enough high-speed flying from his commute, Marshall spins the L-39 through 20 air shows a year, along with
a few friends who were F-14 jocks in another life. For high-
performance acrobatics, he also owns an Extra 300L, the same type of aircraft used by a number of the pilots in the Red Bull Air Race World Series.
Taking flight is an old family habit: Marshall’s grandfather, William J. Marshall Sr., one of the first Americans to earn his pilot’s license, flew with Jimmy Doolittle during World War I,
and his father, William J. Marshall Jr. — who taught young Jeff to fly — was base commander at Great Lakes Naval Air Station in Illinois.
In the mid 1990s, Marshall and his then-9-year-old daughter, Wylly, copiloted a Piper Cub across the country. The two-and-a-half month journey took them from San Francisco to Reno and Las Vegas before hooking a left and heading across the South. “She saw the entire United States from the air,” he says. “We slept under the wing at night.”
And on those rare trips to the store not conducive to subsonic flight, Marshall at least makes sure everyone knows what he’d rather be doing: The license plate on his BMW 760li reads fly fast.
