‘Why has he flown from England to do loops around Westmeath?’

A plane owned by an English aviation firm specialising in aerial surveys spent more than four hours flying across Westmeath and neighbouring counties in the early hours of last Wednesday morning, November 4.

Online flight records show that the plane, a Cessna Model 404 Titan registered to the RVL Group, left the East Midlands Airport in Derby, in England, at 11.02pm on November 3 and spent more than four hours flying back and forth across Westmeath and neighbouring counties before returning to English airspace and landing at Nottingham Airport at 5.45am.

The late night and early morning excursion across the midlands did not go unnoticed, and a number of local people took to social media to complain about the noise from the low flying plane.

One person, who tracked the plane online, Tweeted at 2am on Wednesday morning that they were “fascinated by what’s going through this pilot’s head right now”.

“Why has he flown in a straight line from England just to do loops around Westmeath and Longford?”

When contacted by the Westmeath Examiner, a spokesperson for the RVL Group said that it “regrets any disturbance” the flight may have caused and that the flight was carried out “in full accordance with all applicable regulations and civil aviation authorities”.

The spokesperson also outlined why the survey was conducted at night.

“Some of the survey work we undertake for various environment, government agencies and entities can only be carried out at night for operational and technical reasons.

“These are often, but not limited to, availability of access to busy airspace.

“The sensors on board the aircraft collect data in ‘strips’ of varying width depending on the resolution of data required, hence the up and down flying patterns.

“These ‘strips’ are then joined together to produce a complete survey of the area being studied.

“Night-time flights are usually collecting thermal data or LiDAR imagery to be used in constructing 3D models of the terrain, often to calculate changes in flood risk by environmental agencies.

“As these aircraft are conducting survey work on a specified area, it is rare that we have to cover the same area frequently.

“However, return visits may sometimes be necessary to re-capture data or to further investigate issues identified during previous surveys.”

Despite making a number of queries to government departments, here and in the UK, at the time of writing the Westmeath Examiner had not yet ascertained who commissioned the survey.

However, the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications, the EPA and Environment Agency in the UK had confirmed that the work was not being carried out on their behalf.