The Little Red Aeroplane

The Little Red Aeroplane

The view south from Mthumbane Township, Port St Johns

It had another wonderful Wild Coast weekend. Beautiful hot weather, good friends, fun things had happened.

It was Sunday afternoon, Sunday brunches and lunches were over, people were relaxed, some taking afternoon naps, others catching the last bit of sun. Others had gone for constitutionals, walking along assorted beaches. One local was birdwatching, and was disturbed by a low flying helicopter. Idly she trained her binoculars on the helicopter as she watched it fly over First Beach and then disappear out of sight. She had no conscious memory of having memorized its ZA – number.

A phone call came through to a local resident – a plane had just been seen crashing in to the sea, not far from shore. The description was ‘ a little red plane flying south’. Well, this was Sunday afternoon, the caller was known to enjoy a good many beers, and well, this sounded like he’d had one too many.

So the call wasn’t reacted to – it had to be utter nonsense.  

But then a second call came in, from a totally different location, a few kilometers from where the first caller was. And, as the first caller had said, the second caller had also seen ‘a little red plane heading south’, dive into the sea. And then a third call and then a fourth, all giving the same scant report.

Port St Johns may be small, but there is a very good and efficient, if almost totally unplanned system of reaction to help being needed. A call was made, then another. Those who owned ski boats launched their boats and headed in the direction of where the crash had occurred. Others went up to the high vantage point of Mthumbane township, from where the first call had come from, to try and spot anything, and then directed the skiboat skippers to the spot. Out at sea, where one is nearly at swell level, it is almost impossible to spot survivors in the water.

Calls about the crash kept coming in, but they now also reported that they couldn’t see anything in the water, which was calm and flat.

The search went until dusk, and the ski boats came back to shore, ready to go again at first light.

In the meantime, the South African Rescue Services had been notified. They sent down both helicopters, and rubber ducks to search the area. They spent days searching the area, and found not even the tiniest piece of flotsam. Divers were sent down at the spot of the crash, nothing was seen. Of course it now looked like the locals were all hallucinating, or involved in a massive hoax to get themselves in the papers. But, the bird watcher happened to casually mention, to a search and rescue co-ordinator,  that a helicopter had been in the area at the same time – had its pilot maybe seen anything? Having memorized the ZA registration number, the helicopter was traced, and yes, the helicopter pilot had seen the red plane, and had said the equivalent of ‘howzit’ to the little red plane’s pilot, and they had carried on their merry way. So the locals weren’t delusionary. The little red plane was real.

Flight plans were checked, but nobody had taken off in a little red plane, and even more mysteriously, no little red planes were missing, at least that anybody was owning up to.

Heavy rains came, the Umzimvubu came down in flood, the helicopters couldn’t continue the search, or fly home.

So the pilots and crew sat around their guesthouse whiling the hours away, playing backgammon, and drinking cup after cup of coffee. Then a Port St Johns resident came in to see the guesthouse owner, to tell her that their kids would have to spend the night at school, because the road to the school, which was quite a way out of town, was flooded. There wasn’t much to be done, the kids were safe enough with their equally stranded teachers, so the general attitude was – they’ll have one hell of an adventure!

But one of the pilots overheard the conversation, and decided to do something about a boring day. Could they fly out and fetch the children? Oh yes, couldn’t they just!

So the twenty odd children were picked up by a huge military helicopter and dropped in town – sure enough having had one hell of an adventure! And the pilots? Well at least they’d flown one successful rescue mission!

The search for the little red plane was called off shortly afterwards, and is still a mystery.