Plane missing over Irish Sea

FEARS increased last night for the safety of a couple whose light aircraft disappeared over the Irish Sea.

Emergency air and sea rescue services in Ireland and Britain will today resume the search for the Piper Apache single engine aircraft, which only had fuel to stay airborne for four hours.

A man and woman on board left Weston Aerodrome in Dublin yesterday morning but the plane’s last radar sighting was at 12.30pm on the Welsh side of the George’s Channel.

Dublin Coastguard last night dismissed reports that wreckage was sighted off the Wexford coast. The British-registered plane was en-route to Cardiff.

The search operation involved the Irish Coastguard tasked Rosslare lifeboat, a coastguard helicopter from Waterford and the LÉ Eithne and, on the British side, a Nimrod aircraft from RAF Kinloss, the RAF Sea King rescue helicopter from Chivenor in Devon together with lifeboats from St Davids and Fishguard in Pembrokeshire.

The alarm was raised after the plane failed to arrive around 3pm. A search over 800 square kilometres of water was initially coordinated from RAF Kinloss in Scotland but the operation was later handed over to coastguard centres in Dublin and Milford Haven.

A RAF Rescue Centre spokesperson said weather conditions were “pretty bad” for flying.

He said: “You had everything you didn’t want, fog, mist, heavy rain and severe turbulence.”