Sun Feb 03, 2019 4:31 pm
#1671398
Yes. The aircraft was destroyed by fire - no FDR/CVR. The aircraft was not airworthy - a senior officer had illegally issued a time-limited Release to Service on the type a few days before the crash, despite a clear audit trail that said it wasn’t airworthy. Boscombe Down test pilots had refused to do anything with the Mk2 other than plug-in an external power supply. Known issues included erroneous FADEC software, no avionics sign-off and no icing clearance.
Fog, yes an interesting dilemma. They couldn’t have climbed (icing) so it was either press-on or go back, the latter being rather unpalatable bearing-in mind the pax manifest which included quite a few sets of golf clubs. The weather further up the Great Glen was fine. As I said earlier, most of us think that Rick and John probably got it wrong, like so many before and so many since. However, there was never enough evidence to support the Gross Negligence finding as the RAF’s own criteria at the time said that such a finding could only be made against deceased aircrew if there was “absolute certainty”. Bill Wratten, the senior officer overseeing the Board of Inquiry over-turned the initial findings (which offered a probability of CFIT) and made the Gross Negligence finding without any additional evidence.
Finally, there was no thrill seeking at all. The task was a routine transit at the end of a duty day. Rick and John were not cowboys.
Fog, yes an interesting dilemma. They couldn’t have climbed (icing) so it was either press-on or go back, the latter being rather unpalatable bearing-in mind the pax manifest which included quite a few sets of golf clubs. The weather further up the Great Glen was fine. As I said earlier, most of us think that Rick and John probably got it wrong, like so many before and so many since. However, there was never enough evidence to support the Gross Negligence finding as the RAF’s own criteria at the time said that such a finding could only be made against deceased aircrew if there was “absolute certainty”. Bill Wratten, the senior officer overseeing the Board of Inquiry over-turned the initial findings (which offered a probability of CFIT) and made the Gross Negligence finding without any additional evidence.
Finally, there was no thrill seeking at all. The task was a routine transit at the end of a duty day. Rick and John were not cowboys.
Fly Safely
FE(A), PPL(H)
FE(A), PPL(H)