A plane registered to the West Yorkshire Police Commissioner appeared to circle over Wirral on Tuesday (October 11) evening.
According to tracking data from Flight Radar, the Vulkanair P.68R plane was meant to be flying from Doncaster to Bournemouth. The plane, which has the code UKP153, is registered to the Police & Crime Commissioner (PCC) for West Yorkshire.
The plane was scheduled to leave Doncaster at 6pm on Tuesday, with an expected arrival into Bournemouth of 8:24pm. However, records show it was diverted back to the Yorkshire town.
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The map of its journey shows that the plane flew to Wirral before returning to Doncaster. While above the peninsula, the plane performed a number of loops in the vicinity of Ellesmere Port and Capenhurst.
When the ECHO contacted West Yorkshire Combined Authority for comment about the plane's loops over Wirral, a spokesperson said: "The aircraft are registered to us through the National Police Air Service at the moment, but they’re not actually ours and we don’t have any operational information". Cheshire Police has been contacted for comment.
In March, a plane registered to the West Yorkshire PCC performed loops over Merseyside. It had also taken off from Doncaster Airport before looping over areas of Sefton, with a particular focus around Litherland, Waterloo and Aintree.
Vulcanair P68 planes are based at Doncaster and provide air support for a number of police forces, including Humberside Police. In 2019, GrimsbyLive reported that the brightly-coloured planes are fitted with L3 WESCAM MX15 state of the art cameras.
After the planes were announced, the National Police Air Service said: "When the aeroplanes are operational, they will be deployed from NPAS’ Doncaster base. They will join the existing fleet of helicopters, which fly from 13 other NPAS bases."
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