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An AIRPLANE owned by an English aviation company specializing in aerial surveys spent more than four hours flying through Westmeath and neighboring counties in the early hours of the morning.
Locals were baffled by the plane’s activity as it “circled around Westmeath and Longford.”
Online flight logs show that the plane, an RVL Group registered Cessna Model 404 Titan, left East Midlands Airport in Derby, England, at 11:02 pm on November 3.
He spent over four hours flying back and forth through Westmeath and neighboring counties before returning to English airspace and landing at Nottingham Airport at 5.45am.
The evening and morning excursion through the Midlands did not go unnoticed, with several locals taking to social media to complain about the noise of the low-flying plane.
One person, who tracked the plane online, tweeted at 2 am on Wednesday, November 4, that they were “fascinated by what is going through this pilot’s head right now.”
“Why have you flown straight from England only to circle Westmeath and Longford?”
When contacted by the Westmeath Examiner, a spokesperson for the RVL Group said it “regrets any disturbance” the flight may have caused and that the flight was conducted “in full compliance with all applicable civil aviation regulations and authorities.”
The spokesperson also explained why the survey was conducted at night.
“Some of the inspection work we do for various government environments, agencies and entities can only be done at night for operational and technical reasons.
“Often, but not limited to, the availability of access to occupied airspace.
“The sensors on board the aircraft collect data in ‘strips’ of variable width depending on the resolution of the data required, hence the flight patterns up and down.
“These ‘strips’ are put together to produce a complete study of the area being studied.
“Night flights often collect thermal data or LiDAR images that will be used in the construction of 3D models of the terrain, often to calculate changes in flood risk by environmental agencies.
“Since these planes are doing inspection work in a specific area, it’s rare that we have to cover the same area frequently.
“However, review visits may sometimes be necessary to recapture data or to further investigate problems identified during previous surveys.”
Despite a series of inquiries to government departments, both in Ireland and the UK, it is unclear who commissioned the survey.
However, the Department for the Environment, Climate and Communications, the EPA and the UK Environment Agency confirmed that the work was not being carried out on their behalf.
Online editors
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