On the 16th August as 3 friends and I drove towards Cushendun on the Knocknacarry Road (exact location pictured above), a big cargo style plane flew overhead.
This in itself is quite cool but what has really been playing on my mind is how low it was flying. It couldn't have been more the 400-500m above the road.
My first thought was to look for an airport or airstrip near Cushendun, but one does not seem to exist close enough to explain how low it flew.
My second thought was that it may have been an emergency landing but that surely would have been on the news?
My third thought was some form of surveying may have been carried out in the area but then surely a plane as big as the one we saw was unnecessary. It could have been done with a smaller aircraft.
Unless….it was something more sinister.
Perhaps a foreign nation testing how close they can make it to the UK before the RAF is scrambled?
It's not something unheard of.
Perhaps it was the RAF themselves carrying out an exercise?
After all, the location of the sighting is approximately 150miles – as the crow flies – from where the UK keeps their nuclear submarines.
Have any of you got suggestions or perhaps one of you also saw the plane and recognised what it was or its destination?
P.S. no psychedelics were consumed in the viewing of said aircraft
by HereForTheMoonFlight
9 comments
[THIS](https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/s/BfsnVcVqoH) ?
[deleted]
Bastardville*
RAF Airbus A400 training op. That’s the last thing the RAF would be scrambling as a incecptor. All fighters are based in the mainland UK from bases such as RAF Lossiemouth which would cover Northern Ireland and Donegal (ROI has an agreement that the RAF covers protects Irish airspace).
https://preview.redd.it/20vtj312lejd1.jpeg?width=3873&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fbc7afbf441442b4571b4ce00db0091ccc5e11ad
They were doing loops all along the North Coast on Friday. At one point they were possibly only a couple hundred meters above the sea. Lucky they didn’t hit a seagull at that height!
Jinkies!
I known this has been answered already, but on the same day I seen huge drone fly over the house, it was low enough to see the frame and the camera mount on the bottom. But it was very big, way too big for domestic use and very loud.
If it’s the same plane I think I got a video of it. It was about 16:00 on Friday. Saw it over East Coast of Strangford Lough. It was a beast!
Been a few USAF Globemasters using Aldergrove for refueling in recent times, seems they don’t use Shannon as much now.