Has anyone done this? My father has a small one engine plane (two seats) that he has had about a year.
We have flown a lot in it but only 30 miles or so within Northern Ireland. We were discussing flying to Kintyre or Ayrshire as a trial run.
Whilst this is a short distance, given the plane size I would be wary. Why?
Our plane cruises at around 150-200mph. We talked about going to 10,000 feet. You may need to think about getting a clearance into controlled airspace. Why so high? At 3500 feet at the mid way point you should be able to glide to either coast. Remember most peoples biggest fear, an engine failure is a very rare occurrence, most accidents are caused through other events usually pilot induced.
Has anyone done a similar crossing? Many, many times and over much greater distances. What kind of weather conditions would you need? Depends on what the pilot was comfortable with, personally I'd be more than happy with a 2000' cloud base and anything more than 10 km visibility
We would want to get across as fast as possible so it would be the shortest distance from NI to Scotland. We would not want to spend more than 5 minutes over water. The shortest distance looks to be 13 nm which at 150 MPH (130 knots) is 5 minutes
Is this a risky idea? NO.