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Old 16th Apr 2006, 11:00
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John Blakeley
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Norfolk England
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Walter Kennedy

Thank you for your comment that the WP was neither unusually nor dangerously close to the Mull - I am sure that I have seen other SH pilot comments to the same effect. I also note that the VFR rules applicable to the flight as outlined by Sir John Day to the House of Lords would have allowed the aircraft to be flown as low as 50 feet above ground with a minimum cloud base of 250 feet and minimum visibility of 1 kilometre - 0.81NM, the minimum calcluated distance for the WP change is almost 1.5km, and the question then is whether at 150 kts the Chinook can safely turn port through 7 degrees before before hitting land - I would have expected so having spent a fair number of hours flying around the Falklands hills in a Mk1, but an operator needs to answer that.

The AAIB Report on the wreckage pattern indicated that one of the loadmasters was with the pilots (MALM Forbes), and I seem to recall reading somewhere, but I cannot instantly find it, that it was normal SF practise for one of the loadmasters to be third member of the cockpit crew - again I am sure that somebody will correct me if necessary.

I do not think that either of us could possibly know whether the turn they clearly planned to make (since they had changed WP) was prevented or delayed - contrary to your views and indeed those of John Purdey to whom I will reply later, there were several technical problems that could have developed even in the short time between WP change and impact, as an obvious example the potential 12 second distraction of an engine fail caption quoted in the CA Release (and I assume also included in the MAR). Also, as I tried to point out there is only an assumtion that the aircraft was serviceable with no real or distracting problems at the WP change - we do not know this as a fact, and it is a series of compatible facts that are needed to support gross negligence -not a series of hypotheses turned into facts.

JB
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