Heavy twin piston aircraft over Manchester airport today (23rd May 2012)
 

Seen orbiting M/C airport today at about 2.00. Too high for me to id it. Slow and sounded like a Dak, but from what I could see of the shape, it didn't look like a Dak. Anybody know what it was? It came over twice.

There are two orange coloured Canadair CL215 Amphibians in the UK at the moment. Dont know if they have neen overhead MAN but they may fit the bill. Buffalo Airways as in Ice Pilots TV series.
....and a white Catalina passed through Prestwick today en-route Iceland.

Like wise over LHR at 1430 too much high cloud ?

Apparently a TECNAM P2006T OE-FAT was being evaluated by the police - it may been that?

MAN Reports

A Catalina flew south to north through the Low Level Corridor at around that time. Might have been that.

RIP Arnie, a legend!

That narrows it down to the Catalina or the CL215's then, as that Austrian surveillance plane's engines wouldn't be sounding anything like that (I hope!)



SHJ

I am now reliably informed that it was in fact the two Buffalo CL-215s (you were right Tiger_mate) and that they were C-FAYN and C-FAYU, both being en-route to Turkey from Yellowknife, via Prestwick. They were in flight from Prestwick to Nantes apparently, and then on to Turkey. Given the temperature here, I think they'll be arriving in Turkey none too soon!

Slow speed is explained by my having just now looked up the CL-215 in my Ian Allan "Civil aircraft of the world" 1974 edition. I see that it had and presumably still has a cruising speed of only 181 mph: built for a purpose-fire fighting-rather than speed.

Some are fitted with turbine engines but even this is probably aimed at increased payload rather then speed. The two in the UK had the older radial? Engines. There are photos of them on UKAR
View topic - CL215s at Prestwick 22/5