Sea plane....nope....well yes

[sidaorb]

According to the Turbulent Display Team's FB page, pilot is ok.

Plane lands in sea during Herne Bay air show

[Eric Mc]

Oops.

At least the pilot - and hopefully the plane - look fairly unscathed.

I saw the Druine Team display at the Odiham Families Day a few weeks ago.

[Shar2]

Oops indeed. Great to see the public helping so quickly.

[TR4man]

What plane is it?

[MartG]

Glad both pilot and plane seem unhurt

[Eric Mc]

TR4man said:

What plane is it?

Druine D31 Turbulent

This one, in fact -

[CAPP0]

They're the little things with a Beetle engine aren't they? There's a display team out of Headcorn, I guess it was one of them?

[Eric Mc]

Yes - the VW engine was popular in older homebuilts because it was air cooled and reliable.

[hurstg01]

Eric Mc said:

Yes - the VW engine was popular in older homebuilts because it was air cooled and reliable.

perhaps he wanted the water-cooled version?.............

[Type R Tom]

I was a bit further down the beach so missed it going on. Knew something was up when one of the helicopters that was flying about as part of the display went and hovered over the location for a while, then a fire engine et al turned up.

[lufbramatt]

Glad the guy got out ok and there was no-one in the water, he did put it down quite close to the beach but most of the swimmers were back up towards Herne Bay. In a way I think he was lucky he was in such a lightweight plane as the guys that waded out were able to flip it the right way up without too much trouble.

The red turbulent was circling around for a while over where he ditched, that's when we knew something had happened, no-one said anything about it on the PA for ages though, was only when the Wasp went over to help rather than display that they explained what had gone on. Guess they didn't want mass hysteria after Shoreham in case it was bad news.

Was sad that the Sea Vixen and Vampire were cancelled as a result but apparently the Sea Vixen had an issue with it's flaps at Eastbourne and went home so we wouldn't have seen that anyway.

We still had a great day though, I was sat on the beach in the sun all day with my Dad with a rucksack full of food and beer