S & S
The “horses” I refer to in my posts on 1 & 2 April are:
Firstly, other pilots in that flight who had done the run before to answer the questions
<<What was the planned path>> and
<<what was the usual practice on that path>>; and
Secondly, the controller who could state why either recordings are not available after ZD576’s call or why it was unanswered.
This last point was dismissed by Arkroyal (in his posting of 3rd April) thus:
<<As one who had flown a similar route before, I would not have been surprised by getting no reply to transmissions. I'd simply wait until further up the coast, and speak to Macrihanish once within line of sight.>>
BUT the absence of any further communication (on record) beyond that call is odd and may be significant as follows:
ZD576 was supposed to get acknowledgement before entering particular airspace at low altitude as I recall and made the call at the appropriate time; now, this call was received and recorded at a ground station and so if a reply was made by that ground station there should have been no problem with that reply being recorded (obvious surely, at the source/ no propagation etc considerations);
Thus, either the reply was not made, or recording stopped at that critical point, or the recording has been withheld from the public domain.
If the reply was not made, the controller must be asked why not.
If the recordings did stop there, it should be established why so and the controller should state what was said.
There may be an explanation for the latter case (recordings withheld); for example, some information on, say, a perceived threat, may have been passed to the crew that may have changed the “milk run” into an operational flight – thus changing the flight rules somewhat (I hope the significance of this is apparent to some of you at least – on a routine flight, the VFR vs IFR simplistic argument has been used to dismiss any reliance upon TACAN for judging distance off the Mull when coming close in).
Anyway, why go into conjecture – as I have said, these fundamental aspects of the flight have not been addressed and yet the “horses” are available – they can’t all have gone for a walk in the woods ….
Oh and generally, I believe that the verdicts on the pilots was wrong and very unjust – a disgrace, in fact, But it is not enough to close this issue with the clearance of their names – although this would be a very good thing in its own right – do not forget that the UK’s top antiterrorist team went down that tragic day. Their demise opened the way for THAT peace process (that I am sure these guys would have vigorously opposed) with profound consequences for the people of Northern Ireland. Getting to the truth of what happened just may cast a different light on the sponsors of THAT process and break the deadlock before the spirit of the British people there.