RAF Valley Hawk jets in near-miss with mystery 'paramotor'

TWO Hawk jets were involved in a near miss with a mystery paramotor on the “approach lane” for RAF Valley.

- Owen Hughes

The paramotor which is a powered para-glider had not been detected on radar and hadn't notified Air Traffic Control (ATC) of its intentions.

This saw the two Hawks come within 200ft of the motorised glider around five miles south of RAF Valley.

It was visually identified by crew at a late stage in the incident on November 27.

After the near-miss, all traffic within the visual circuit was instructed to land due to the unknown routeing of the paramotor. An investigation was launched and an Airprox (air proximity) report has now been released.

The report stated: "The pair of Hawks came within an estimated 200ft of the para[motor].

"Although the para[motor] pilot was operating within the law, it would be fair to say that they were operating with poor awareness of the hazard of flying in the approach lane of a busy fast-jet base.

"Likewise, the Hawk formation had no awareness of the presence of the para[motor] until it was too late to do anything about it."

Despite extensive efforts, it proved impossible to track down the pilot of the motorised glider, which had been hard to identify on the day due to having a dark-coloured canopy against a dark-coloured ground.