Funerals for two Cork plane crash victims

Mourners will say a final farewell today to the first victims to be buried from the Cork plane crash that claimed six lives.

President Mary McAleese will attend the requiem of a relative who was among the dead.

Co Tyrone businessman Brendan McAleese, 39, who was a cousin of the president’s husband Martin, will be buried after a funeral service at St MacNissius church in Tannaghmore, Antrim.

A requiem for 45-year-old Pat Cullinan, a partner in leading accountancy firm KPMG in Belfast, will take place at St Patrick’s Church in the Co Tyrone village of Cranagh.

The other four victims were Spanish pilot Jordi Gola Lopez, 31; co-pilot Andrew Cantle, 27, from York; 49-year-old businessman Richard Noble, who was originally from Derbyshire but lived in Northern Ireland, and Captain Michael Evans, 51, deputy harbour master in Belfast.

Rescue crews who pulled survivors from the ill-fated Manx2 commuter flight from Belfast, which crashed on its third attempt to land in thick fog at Cork Airport, were given an emotional standing ovation during a memorial service for the victims yesterday.

Hundreds of people who gathered at the Church of the Assumption in Ballyphehane, near the airport, to offer prayers for those killed and injured in Thursday’s tragedy paid spontaneous tribute to the emergency services who helped save six passengers.

President McAleese and Taoiseach Brian Cowen were both represented by their aides de camp at the service in Cork while Cathy Goode, from the Spanish Embassy, joined medics, gardaí, airport police and several politicians at the Mass.

Bishop of Cork and Ross Dr John Buckley told the congregation he had no answers as to why the six men lost their lives in the disaster.

“All we can say is there are no answers,” he said.

“Suffering and death are mysterious. The Lord’s ways are not our ways.”

Fr Michael Murphy, the parish priest who carried out the last rites on the dead at a makeshift field hospital beside the plane wreckage, asked Ms Goode to pass on Ireland’s heartfelt condolences to the family of Mr Lopez.

As members of the emergency services walked down the aisle of the church at the end of the service, the congregation applauded.

Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork Paul Colton led a service at the chapel in Cork University Hospital, where 12 candles were lit for all who were on board the doomed flight.