Jet to return as tourist attraction 40 years after emergency landing on Cork racetrack
The Gulf-stream II jet plane taking off from Mallow Racecourse in 1983.
A jet that made international headlines following an emergency landing at an Irish town’s racecourse 40 years ago looks set to return there permanently while the late pilot’s ashes are to be scattered over the track.
Captain Ruben Ocana became an overnight celebrity when he landed a Gulf-stream II jet on Mallow racecourse in Co. Cork in April 1983. It’s just as well he spotted the racecourse as the jet had just three minutes of fuel left.
Locals made such a fuss of Ocana that he felt it was a second home, returning there with his family on some occasions.
Ocana, a Mexican, died in 2009 and around 30 members of his family are coming from Mexico and Spain to Mallow on April 21 and 22 to attend a new festival named in his honour – OcanaFest - and scatter his ashes on the racecourse. Dignitaries from the Mexican embassies in Dublin and London are also attending.
Ocana spent six weeks in Mallow as a special runway was built to allow him to take off again. One of the leading lights behind the new festival, Hibernian Hotel owner Kevin Owens, decided it would be great to track down the aircraft and bring it back to the town as a permanent reminder of the incident.
Two months ago, Kevin, 33, and his brother-in-law, Michael Burke, started research and tracked the jet to an airfield in Michigan, USA.
“We sent numerous emails and to be honest we were close to giving up,” Kevin said. Then out of the blue, the not-for-profit institute which owns the jet responded and offered to sell it to Kevin and some of his backers.
“They’ve agreed to sign it over and I’m going there in June to sort it out. We’re going to have to dismantle it, bring it back here and re-assemble it. It'll be a six to eight-month project,” he said.
“I’m currently talking to a company called Worldwide Aircraft which specialises in this kind of thing.”
He acknowledged the project “isn’t going to be cheap” but is prepared to put up a large sum himself and is confident of getting corporate sponsorship to bridge any gap.
“We're yet to find a suitable site for it in Mallow, but when we do we believe it'll be a massive tourist attraction,” Kevin said.
Ocana stayed in the Hibernian Hotel which the Owens family has run since 1988. He eventually had to move to the nearby Central Hotel because it was block booked for a wedding.
In honour of his association, the Hi-B the hotel’s sister bar and restaurant, a few doors away, is named after Ocana.
The festival highlights include horse racing, an aerobatic show and drone displays at the racecourse, plus Mexican-themed children’s workshops, musical performances and culinary treats in the town.
Cork County Council is the lastest organisation to provide sponsorship for the festival after Fine Gael councillor Tony O’Shea won approval from colleagues for the move.
“Hopefully it'll become a permanent annual fixture. It'll be great for tourism,” he said.
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