Chinook
John Blakeley. There seem to be two quite different aspects to this sad case. One of them concerns airworthiness, and since I do not have access to the relevant documents, nor to the regulations in force at the time, nor was I in anyway involved with that issue at around that time, I am not qualified to comment. It may well be, for all I know, that the aircraft should not have been airborne at all at that time; but the harsh fact is that the aircraft was flying and that this crew were in control of it.
But the other aspect concerns the airmanship involved, and my extensive flying experience tells me that the crew should not have been where they were in those weather conditions. That was the negligence.
What we will never know, and it does not matter because they had by now put themselves -and their innocent passengers- at grave risk, is why the crew pressed on, in that weather, instead of turning left up the coast of the Mull. It is my unsupported, but logical, belief that they misread the ground features, mistaking the fog staion for the lighthouse compound, and thus placing themselves about 500 yards to the east of where they thought they were, and therefore facing a hillside around 3-500 feet higher than they expected. It was now too late to rectify their error. I cannot think of any other explanation, and nor has any better one been suggested, and nor does it matter since the crew had by now breached one of the most basic rules of airmanship, ie do not fly IMC below your safety height.
I trust that we do not have to go through this again, but no doubt the new Inquiry will look at this possible explanation of an otherwise inexplicable instance of aircrew negligence.
With renewed good wishes, John Purdey