#PlaneSailing - A funeral director's ambitious plans for a unique 'glamping' site in Enniscrone will move a step closer to fruition later this week as he prepares to sail a passenger jet by barge up the coast from Shannon.
That's right, a passenger jet – a Boeing 767 to be precise, which David McGowan picked up for a song from a liquidating Russian airline, as the Irish Examiner reports.
McGowan is the entrepreneur behind the planned 'Quirky Nights Glamping Village' in his Co Sligo seaside town, where the former airliner will be the centrepiece of a development that will also feature repurposed train carriages, dry-docked boats London black cabs.
All will be refitted to accommodate a new kind of camper inspired by boutique festivals like Electric Picnic, people seeking the beauty of the outdoors and the comforts of hotels with a twist.
"I’m surrounded with death every week," McGowan told Today FM's Anton Savage Show of what prompted his imaginative idea to boost his coastal community's economy. "You need something to give you a buzz. You need to out and do something unusual.”
But getting the plane from Shannon Airport to Enniscrone posed a problem, as it's simply too big to transport by traditional means.
Hence the need for a barge to sail it by sea along the Wild Atlantic Way, and a specially engineered 'cradle' to lift it onto the barge.
That didn't come cheap – more than double what McGowan paid for the aircraft itself – but it did the job, and the plane is now ready at Knockbeg Point waiting for the weather to clear before the barge sets off this Thursday, expected in Enniscrone on Saturday 7 May.
A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed Independent.ie as the source of quotes from The Anton Savage Show on Today FM.
