Ultralights take to Belizean skies
For most of us, our first exposure to the world of ultralight aircraft was news of a Boxing Day plane crash in the village of Blue Creek in the Orange Walk District. But the real story of this latest craze in aviation is not in the mishaps, but in the increasing number of Belizeans who are taking to the clear empty skies. For better or for worse, the nation seems tailor-made for this new type of personalised activity that is somewhere between sport and transport.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Early morning on the Placencia Peninsula: peaceful, quiet, serene…that is until Tito Roveda wakes up.
This funny-looking contraption is called an ultralight, or in Belizean terms, the flying boat. Tito Roveda and his friends have established Belize’s first ultralight flying school.
Tiziano “Tito” Roveda, Ultralight Pilot
“This is a micro-lite. It’s nothing to do with airplane; this is a recreational and popular aviation. That means we have to be the mechanic, the pilot, and we are taking full responsibility on what we are doing.”
What they’re doing is carting one thousand pounds of man and machine into the air at a whopping fifty miles an hour…and guess what, we’re going for a ride.
Flying is as hazardous as it is fun and Roveda makes us sign a waiver, accepting liability for that reality.
On the ground, Roveda tries hard to clue us in on what to expect in the air.
Tito Roveda
“We not going to catch any turbulence because we are flying above water. Above water we never find turbulence except if we get some gusty winds, then we are going to jump a little bit on it, but that’s fun, that’s why we’re flying also, alright. You never have to move like crazy on board, you have your seatbelt that you have to lock while we are in the air because while we are in the water, we are a boat and we don’t need seatbelts.”
According to Roveda the craft doesn’t need much to go from boat to plane.
Tito Roveda
“All the control for the airplane is made by the A-frame, so this machine is being controlled by push right go left or push right so left, exactly like a bicycle as this is the same thing for the rudder. So if you see the machine has a propeller on the back and there is a rudder over here. This gives you the chance to move simply in the water. The keel underneath the boat is specially designed to not stick in the water, and while you give power it jumps out of the water and you can take off in about one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet. If the wind is about five to eight knots you can shorten that distance also. The landing distance is even shorter than that.”
And in just a few short minutes, we’re ready to take flight. The pelican’s perspective of Placencia was breathtaking, even if my stomach was in my throat.
The Belize ultralight crew is ready to capitalise on the flight’s ideal potential to take the adventurous to check out manatees, whale sharks, and on air tours of the peninsula. But first they’ve got to sell the safety of the craft to the visitors and locals alike. To help me do that, my boyfriend Warren Coye, a Placencia native himself, volunteers for the job.
At first it’s smooth sailing with plenty of fly-bys for the camera…turns…and even a touch down in the lagoon. But just as Warren and his pilot come in for their landing, something goes wrong. (Plane turns over into water)
Janelle Chanona
“War you alright?”
Amazingly, both passengers escape with only minor cuts and bruises, but this dramatic footage demonstrates just how much worse the accident could have been. After viewing the tape, Tito says the cause of the accident was a combination of a crosswind and a stick lying just below the surface. But that explanation remains in the realm of speculation.
In the meantime, the ultralight engine has been sent to the United States for reconditioning and it will be weeks or months before the flying boat is back in the air.
According to the Department of Civil Aviation, there are no laws regarding the use of ultralights in Belize. But because many of the prospective passengers are visitors, the safety of ultralights is very much the concern of the Belize Tourism Board.
Anthony Mahler, Director of Product Development
“At the moment, there is a tour operator’s legislation and that has a tour operator licensing committee that will look at these issues on a case by case basis. At the moment, we have to depend on other agencies, for example in this case, civil aviation, who is the regulatory body that oversees this type of activity for us to say, alright this is a safe type of activity and we should look at it. But in this case, this company or this person involved in this incident did not meet our requirement, so we could not go ahead and say you can operate from a tourism-based activity.”
Ultralights are used all over the world, mostly for recreational purposes. And like everywhere, their popularity is soaring here in Belize. There are eight on record in the country. One of them is owned by Ben Banman in Spanish Lookout.
Ben Banman, Ultralight Pilot
“Everybody likes to take a ride on it. On Saturdays usually I have a bunch of people here at the airport; everybody wants a ride. I’m weight limited, so I can’t take everybody up so that balances it a little bit. So it’s more balanced for me so I’m not overworked with the aircraft.”
Banman says safety is very much a part of his pre-flight plan.
Ben Banman
“I do a check-up every time before I go up, I walk around the aircraft, I make sure all the bolts are in place, all the cables are in place. I check the fuel; make sure I have fuel to go where I want to go. And if everything looks okay, I start it and let the engine run for a while, if it runs smooth and everything sounds okay, then I go up.”
But as many times as he’s been up, he’s been down three separate times and he’s managed to walk away from each of them.
Ben Banman
“Yeah, I’ve had a few close calls, in the beginning when I had the aircraft I didn’t know my gas tank level all that well yet, so I gambled and I flew a little too long and I ran out of gas I had to land in the fence. A big crowd of cows were there and high grass, so I just prayed that the cows would open a way for me to come in. I came in and I noticed everything was okay, my friend beside me was okay, so we took it out to the road again, put in some gas and took off again.”
Those accidents didn’t stop Banman, and his enthusiasm is enough to convince cameraman Rick Romero and I to go for a spin.
Ben Banman
“That was fun wasn’t it?”
Fun, but even Banman admits flying shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Ben Banman
“I definitely recommend everybody who ever flies an ultralight to have a good amount of training because this aircraft is very delicate to flying. And any circumstances when the breeze picks up or weather gets a little bit hard, it’s difficult so most definitely I would say, never take anybody up before you have ten hours experience.”
But as for the experience itself, despite our accident and reports of others, which included passengers getting seriously hurt, the rush is addictive which is probably why Banman, Roveda, and their airborne colleagues are still high on ultralights.
Ben Banman
“I would like to see a hundred of these in Belize flying everyday. For me that would be the best thing to see, to see aircraft flying, ultra-lights. The country of Belize is the best country to fly in, it’s very beautiful, especially over Spanish Lookout it’s very beautiful.”
But to be sure, the jury is still out on whether Belizeans will want to get into ultralights and everything that that implies.
