U2 frontman Bono passes through the world with the ease of a man with enough money to do whatever the hell he likes, and enough clout and confidence to choose whomever he does it with. He’s a Zelig-like figure, as comfortable entertaining vast crowds as he is attending political summits with high-powered leaders. Put very simply, he finds himself in situations the rest of us never will, simply by dint of being Bono.
Which explains why he was flying on Jimmy Buffett’s plane the day Jamaican police filled it with bullet holes.
It’s January 1996. Bono has spent much of his time since the Zoo tour ended working on humanitarian endeavours and the Passengers album, a collection of tracks written with Brian Eno for imaginary avant-garde film soundtracks. U2 reconvene in late 1995 for the writing sessions for what will become the Pop album, after which the frontman takes a break and flies to Miami with his family: wife Ali, daughters Jordan and Eve.
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There, he meets Mr Miami himself, Jimmy Buffett, the Margaritaville hitmaker with a famous penchant for all things tropical. Buffett is planning to go shopping for jerk chicken in his plane, a Grumman HU-16 Albatross flying boat named Hemisphere Dancer. It’s a former long-range search and rescue aircraft that served in the U.S. Navy – including as an observation craft during Pacific nuclear testing in 1956. The plane was retired in 1967 and left in storage before being purchased and restored by Buffett in 1995.
Buffett decides to fly to Jamaica, against the wishes of his co-pilot, Jim Powell, who warns the singer that inclement weather may make a water landing difficult, and that neighbouring areas may not take too kindly to unexpected craft showing up. There have been problems, you see, with flying boats used to smuggle drugs in the Caribbean. Powell – wisely, as it turns out – backs out of the trip.
Bono and his family don’t. And they’re joined by Chris Blackwell, their former boss at Island Records, who’d grown up in Jamaica and built the famous Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas. Bono and Ali had honeymooned in Jamaica in 1982 as guests of Blackwell at his GoldenEye Estate, a 50-acre site at Oracabessa Bay that had once belonged to James Bond creator Ian Fleming.
As Powell predicted, Mother Nature does not oblige. The water at Buffett’s intended destination, near Montego Bay on Jamaica’s northern coast, is too rough to make a landing, so the flight diverts to Negril, on the island’s west coast, where Hemisphere Dancer is able to touch down in calm water.
The local authorities are less calm, and open fire on the plane as it sits in the water, apparently convinced that the unannounced arrival is carrying illicit cargo. Thankfully, its passengers have just disembarked, and are on board a launch heading towards the shore when target practice commences
“These boys were shooting all over the place,” Bono later told the Belfast Telegraph. “I felt as if we were in the middle of a James Bond movie – only this was real. It was absolutely terrifying, and I honestly thought we were all going to die.”
More than 100 rounds were fired at Hemisphere Dancer, leaving several bullet holes in the fuselage, the windshield shattered, but its human cargo undamaged.
“Thank God we were safe and sound,” said Bono. “My only concern was for their safety. It was very scary, let me tell you. You can’t believe the relief I felt when I saw the kids were okay.”
The Jamaican Goverment were swift to apologise to the Irish special envoy to Jamaica, Peter King, who revealed that the apology had been “unreservedly accepted” by the U2 frontman. An official investigation eventually ascertained that Hemisphere Dancer had been a victim of mistaken identity, and that no criminal charges would be filed against the officers involved.
Buffett, meanwhile, who had capsized another seaplane the previous year while landing in Nantucket, documented the Negril incident in the unfortunately titled Jamaica Mistaica, a track on his 1996 album Banana Wind, with lyrics recounting his brush with death.
Just about to lose my temper
As I endeavoured to explain
We had only come for chicken
We were not the ganja plane
Come back, come back, back to Jamaica
Don’t you know, we made a big mistake-a
We’d be so sad if you told us goodbye
And we promise not to shoot you out of the sky
Jimmy Buffet died in 2023, but Hemisphere Dancer lives on as a permanent outdoor exhibit at the Lone Palm Airport Bar at Universal CityWalk in Orlando, Florida. It was refurbished in 2025, when a bullet hole patched in 1996 to meet aviation standards was restored. It’s a permanent reminder of the day Buffett and Bono went out for chicken and almost got killed.
“One of the inescapable encumbrances of leading an interesting life,” Buffett once mused, “is that there have to be moments when you almost lose it.”