Night flight over Bury.
 

Lay awake at 01.00, shift work doesn't half mess up your sleep pattern, I often hear the drone of what sounds like an old, slow twin over Bury, north of Manchester. This happens within a few minutes most nights so I was wondering if it was an Air Atlantique Dakota doing a newspaper run to lands up north or is it something different entirely? Not complaining by any means, just curious. Incidentally, if there was a spare seat one night for a lowly PPL...............!

Probably the Air Atlantique Electra - Don't think Air Atlantique have flown the Dakota's on cargo flights for a while now?

Are there any F-27s or Shorts 360s flying regular mail routes at Night over the north west of England? If yes, then it could be one of those.

Won't be a DC-3, might be an Electra or it could be a surveillance aircraft.

There's the police plane operating out of Broughton. Might be that. Seems to drone around quite alot, and it would fit the old, noisy prop plane description.

I would have thought the flight times are too regular for a Police aircraft, it is usually within 10 minutes of 01.00.

It's either the Rapex SH360 inbound EMA...[V. unlikely] or the Mainliner F27 from NEW to Bristol...and back

Miniliner? The Italians who took over from MNG's F-27s?

Give that man a cigar :ok:

Rapex SH360 goes out from EMA at around 01.30 am most weekday mornings upto EDI I think?

Usually flies over my area at around 01.50 am.

Same here for my neck of the woods, Severn estuary, with the frequent drone of a prop going over in the wee smalls.
I put 'em down to mail & freight runs in and out BRS CDF.