John Purdey
I believe that it is not the actual speed that is contentious but rather that there seemed to be a suggestion pushed throughout the inquiries that they had been going too fast in the conditions and that this contributed to the crash which I believe is absolute rubbish and many of you contributing to this thread should have said so strongly a long time ago here are my thoughts on speed alone:
Mr Holbrook had not seen a (big) twin rotor helicopter before and so could not be expected to be able to judge its speed AT ALL do you remember the FIRST time you ever saw a jumbo jet on finals? (yep, going back a bit) looked so slow like it was hanging in the air, right? an unfamiliar object with no nearby familiar objects to compare it with. With all respect to Mr Holbrook, all that could reasonably be taken from his witness was that it was not doing anything unusual and was in reasonable visibility whilst it was being observed and this was a couple of miles off the Mull when its speed would have been expected to be at the optimum for the job in hand a ferry flight at its best cruising speed which many of you should know and should have said clearly some time ago that this was not excessive that it was to be expected not let them get away with insinuating that it was anything like unduly hasty/reckless, whatever.
The evidence from the crash and reconstruction of the last moments suggest that the cruising speed (with that strong tailwind) had been maintained very much to impact they were not expecting to enter the mist it was not that they were going to fast to pick their way, they had been going to turn before it and had been approaching it in clear air there is no maximum speed that you should use when intending to avoid an obstacle, you just avoid it if you are flying a FJ at low level and, while always intending to fly around it, you crash into a hill, it was not the speed that was the problem. If they really knew how close the mist/Mull was then they should have turned by the actual position of waypoint A not slowed down or started to climb over just turned whilst clear of the mist.
Here I go again: they were somehow misled as to how far they had to go.