A FORMER pilot was shocked when a light aircraft swoopedlow past her home – and close to Dartmouth Academy – around lunchtime on Tuesday.

Griselda Guthrie spotted the small red vintage plane below the tree line from the sitting room window of her farmhouse on the outskirts of Dartmouth.

A delivery man in her drive was also shaken as the aircraft came close before heading off northwards.'It was about 30ft off the ground and so low I thought it was going to crash,’ she said. ‘Both the delivery man and I were badly shaken by it and concerned.

‘I am on the flight path to the Britannia Royal Naval College and used to helicopters but this plane was dangerously low.

‘I think it was a single seater but couldn’t be sure. I hope the pilot wasn’t in trouble. My concern was safety.’

Griselda, a former Dartmouth town and district councillor, held a pilot’s licence when she lived in Australia in the 1970s.

Both Dunkeswell aerodrome, near Honi­ton, and Bolt Head airfield, near Kingsbridge, reported no movement of aircraft on Tuesday.

A spokesman from Exeter International Airport said it was unusual to have light aircraft choosing to fly in wet and windy conditions and it may have taken off and landed in a private field.

The Civil Aviation Authority said it would only have been notified in the event of an incident involving safety.