Thanks Discorde
to understand further especially P2 who was blamed by certain parties for lack of ability; I did my baron flying with him, a guy ex fleet air arm chippies who chucked in his commission and a horny old hurribomber pilot who had left a wing tip and aileron on a tree stump and if it wasn’t for the direction the valley turned he wouldn’t have got out of it. After my instrument rating I had lots of hours to burn..I had seriously messed up on tests ..and I went over the new forest and did a few straight stalls..one of which flicked and I ended up fully inverted looking up at my brief case. I told pat about it and we looked at the aircraft which was obviously bent, probably from a cocked up barrel roll..and pat said to me « ace if bullsh@t was a trombone you would be a full brass band »
The 4 of us were permitted to do one night stop and we chose Amsterdam and the red light area with quite a few beers. The morning I flew Ams - Ostende where Jerry took over to fly airways through a virulent front back to hamble where the rest of the fleet was grounded. We got into some serious sh@t and Jerry said to pat Should I reduce to turbulence speed..NO… a minute or so later there was an almighty bang, a scream and pat yanked back the throttles whilst Jerry continued flying.
lesson two
the atmosphere in BEA was extremely toxic and it was obvious that we weren’t wanted and that many didn’t want us in the RHS.
I was at base with Jerry, he was paired with another course mate who went onto the VC10 with me which was an experiment by BOAC to take us directly into the rhs and part 1..I failed my first check.
The 4 of us came back from prestwick for the Trident 2 differences course but towards the end we were told that the board of trade would not accept our partial training..you will read there was an argument in the inquiry where lord lane said he believed captain holdstock..the guy who had visited the latter’s office was the guy who put down land flap at noise point instead of selecting it up..he went on to fly Concorde.
I flew with number 2 in management and a turncoat who also became a big cheese in my first weeks..they would not let me fly the aircraft except with the autopilot engaged and way above Terra firma. That was the sort of trust they had in us before the accident.
We all tried fiddling with the flap lever to see if it would inadvertently move but it wouldn’t.
Based on my experience Key, like Several others who found flying the trident at speeds way on the backside of the drag curve, plugged in the autopilot very low and whilst accelerating which led to it pitching up, loosing speed..pitching down..la la la..the flaps were selected in at noise by Jerry and he would have throttled back..they got the clearance up to six zero which all three were required to write down on their NAV logs ..P3 on a table to his right and the others under their respective DV windows…and Key who had been recently refused a training appointment and not a happy bunny ordered Jerry to « put it in » and possibly pointed in the direction of the height acquire box adjacent to the droop lever. Under SOP it was Keys task ne Jerrys next task was to select the droop in, monitor the engines and his instruments.
It was a simple use of an abrivated command to select flight level six zero in the height acquire box being mistaken from select droop in..
At that early stage I certainly hadn’t managed to sort out a scanning system which included all of the front panel..a BEA special with the third horizon next to the captains left knee..
The last working accident investigator told me two snippets..the simulator did not replicate the aircraft in pitch and that a clever individual stuck a plastic bag over the levers to preserve the evidence coz it started to rain..this actually destroyed it.
lastly our union rep stated that by examining the bulbs they were able to ascertain which ones had been illuminated..if the filament had power it burnt.
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