{"id":331050,"date":"2026-03-05T23:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T23:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/331050\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T23:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T23:45:07","slug":"new-garda-aircraft-comes-off-runway-at-baldonnel-in-minor-incident-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/331050\/","title":{"rendered":"New Garda aircraft comes off runway at Baldonnel in \u2018minor\u2019 incident \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The newly acquired <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/an-garda-siochana\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/an-garda-siochana\/\">Garda<\/a> surveillance aircraft came off the runway while landing in poor weather on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Canadian-made De Havilland Twin Otter entered service last year after the previous aircraft reached the end of its service life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The incident occurred while it was conducting training exercises from its base at Casement Aerodrome, the headquarters of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/air-corps\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/air-corps\/\">Irish Air Corps<\/a> in Baldonnel, west Dublin. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Open-source flight data shows the aircraft taking off from Shannon at 2.07pm and travelling across the country and landing a short time later in Casement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Part of the aircraft\u2019s landing gear left the runway as it was landing and travelled along the grass. The incident was described as \u201crelatively minor\u201d by a source. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The aircraft suffered no obvious damage but a full assessment will have to take place before it can be cleared to fly again, sources said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/garda-siochana\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/garda-siochana\/\">Garda<\/a> has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The new aircraft was acquired last year at a cost of about \u20ac7 million, a price which included sophisticated surveillance equipment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The aircraft is flown by two Air Corps personnel, with a team of specialist garda\u00ed operating surveillance equipment in the aircraft\u2019s rear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/2025\/10\/29\/120m-expansion-plan-for-casement-aerodrome-to-house-growing-air-corps-fleet\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u20ac120m expansion plan for Casement Aerodrome to house growing Air Corps fleetOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Its mission is exclusively intelligence gathering and surveillance. The aircraft is designed to operate at high altitude, invisible to people on the ground, and it can remain in the air for hours at a time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In previous years, the Garda aircraft has been used to monitor activity by organised crime groups and subversives, although its exact activities are a closely guarded secret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The newly acquired Garda surveillance aircraft came off the runway while landing in poor weather on Thursday. The&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[81336,45,102566,72,1346,61,60],"class_list":["post-331050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-air-corps","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-baldonnell","tag-business","tag-garda-siochana","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}