US Military Exposed at Shannon Airport

Wednesday April 02, 2008 01:56

by CC

US Cargo includes exposives.

During a lively debate on yesterday's Joe Duffy's Liveline a spokesperson from Murray Air, a chartered cargo carrier for the US Military, announced that the company was licensed to cargo explosives, weapons and depleted uranium through Shannon Airport.

The robust discussion was between between Ed Horgan, Tracey Belle from Murray Air and with contributions from eyewitnesses who saw the the flaming McDonnell Douglas DC8 fly over their houses.

The following text is a comment from a regular indymedia commentator.

For those of you who missed it, the Liveline programme started with people from West Limerick, and Shannon Town ringing in about an incident that took place last Friday, involving a cargo aircraft operated by Murray Air Cargo. The aircraft, a Mc Donnell Douglas DC8 was flying from McChord Air Force Base (home of Combat Airlift), stopping at Gander in Newfoundland, refuelling at Shannon and scheduled to stop at Cologne, Germany before heading to Qatar.

Apparently, the aircraft suffered a flameout, in one of its four engines, described by callers as a streak of flame trailing from the plane. There has been some concern that the plane dumped fuel over the town of Askeaton in county Limerick before landing. This has been denied by Murray Air spokeswoman, Tracey Bell.

If it was fully laden with fuel, then it would have been a bad idea not to dump fuel over the Atlantic to reduce the weight for landing.

According to local media reports, the crew did contact Air Traffic Control and did state they were dumping fuel. It should be noted that before Ms/Mrs Bell came on air, a retired Dublin Airport ground crew member said that standard procedure would be to dump fuel to get the weight down, and that it was illegal to dump fuel over residential areas. The incident is under investigation by the US National Transport Safety Bureau and Ireland's Air Accident Investigation Unit.

The dumping of the fuel, however doesn't appear to be an issue of national importance, especially compared to what did come out of the interview.

The Murray Air spokeswoman, said she would not disclose information about the flight or it's cargo, but under pressure from Ed, admitted that Murray Air does operate charters for the US military and does have a hazardous Materials license to carry explosives, weapons, including Depleted Uranium, though she adamantly denied that it was carrying weapons on this flight.

When asked if Murray Air had sought permission from the Irish Authorities to carry weapons through Ireland, the spokeswoman replied that "Murray Air is fully compliant with regulations". She gave a number of non-denial-denials and even contradicted herself when asked about brining weapons through Shannon in the past. First she said they never had, then she said they had, and then she said that she did not have this information. She eventually hung up on Joe Duffy.
The show should be available on the RTE website tomorrow.

It is also worth noting that this is not the first time that a flight coming from McChord Air Force Base has had trouble at Shannon.

In Dec 2005, a C-17 coming from McChord AFB en route to the Middle East, made an emergency landing at Shannon, causing the airport and industrial estate to be evacuated. RTE didn't report on it until 12 hours later, when they stated that the US embassy had "CONFIRMED" that the aircraft was only carrying helium gas. They did not mention that the pilot had informed the authorities that he was carrying "Hazardous Material". see indy story http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73255