Pilot project from Mexico to Mallow

A crash landing is leading to a crash course for two schools separated by thousands of miles of ocean in their different cultures and languages.

A new penpal initiative has been set up between a school in North Cork and one in Mexico’s second city, Guadalajara, by the daughter of a pilot who famously landed a jet on Mallow racecourse.

Captain Ruben Ocaña carried out a successful emergency landing of a Gulfstream jet on the racecourse on April 18, 1983.

The Mexican became a folk hero after he was forced to land after being prevented by fog from making a refuelling stop at Shannon Airport.

He was stranded in Mallow for 39 days while the jet’s insurers insisted on building a runway at the racecourse so he could fly the plane out again.

Captain Ocaña revisited the town three years later with his family, including daughter Mariana, who returned there this week on another mission.

Mariana, who teaches in a 400-pupil school, brought letters and photographs from some of her pupils to St Patrick’s Boys National School to set up penpal connections.

Her pupils came up with the idea after she told them the story about her father, who died last year, aged 81.

“We don’t want to use emails to correspond,” said Mariana. “We think writing on a piece of paper is more personal. It will let the pupils learn about each other’s cultures and we want to extend it to my pupils learning Gaelic and the Irish pupils learning Spanish.”

She said she wanted to come back to Mallow again to tell the people how wonderful they were to her father during his enforced stay there and to set up links between Irish and Mexican children who weren’t even born when he made his epic landing.

Sean Horgan, principal of the 210-pupil local school, said his third-class pupils would be responding to the letters sent from their counterparts in Mexico. “They were really chuffed to see their names on the envelopes and to get pictures of the Mexican children and their families,” he said.

For Mariana’s arrival, the school was decked out in Mexican flags and teacher Roisín Walsh had already taught some of her pupils Spanish greetings.

Mr Horgan said he was delighted with the twinning idea and pointed out that a former pupil at his school, John Carpenter, starred in a recent film called The Runway, which is loosely based on Captain Ocaña’s flying exploits.