AOF, many thanks for your 2083 and clarification.
Thomas Coupling:
From now on, this is my perspective on what happened:
He'd left the prime pumps on throughout the sortie.
At some stage in flight, he'd been in the hover and the Tx pumps were flagging up cavitation due to hover attitude. He'd switched them OFF - been distracted after flying out of the hover and failed to turn them back on again.
He was @ 400' [why do people think he was @ 1000'?]. when the first engine failed due to fuel starvation. He was sorting out the lost services due to the engine failure (mainly police equipment) AND he was positioning for a landing @ night low level over a city, 180 degrees out of wind when the second donk stopped UNEXPECTEDLY(in his mind). He continued to manoeuvre for a landing spot whilst milking the Nr and unfortunately allowed it to drop below its recoverable minimum (83% I recall???). Hyds fail at 63% - where there is total loss of aircraft control.
I do think it is now worth revisiting the witness statements in light of the latest AAIB update, while keeping an open mind.
http://www.pprune.org/8192615-post721.html
Could the pilot be positioning for an emergency landing
bright light shining down
and attempting a restart
big flash of sparks
I note that Bargeddie is only a couple of miles east of the CTR perimeter so the ATC call timed at 2218 for clearance would likely have been around then. Working backwards from 2222, would I be right in surmising that the reds should have come on around 2212 and the ambers 2209 (subject to fault free operation).
Of course we can only be sure of the position of prime and transfer pumps at point of impact. The prime pump switches could have been on for the whole sortie, or equally possible, just for a few seconds prior. It is impossible to know the configuration at any time prior to the position in which they were found..
Imagine for a second that, hypothetically, the pilot had switched the transfer pumps on just a few seconds before impact but too late to have any effect. We would all be sitting here wondering how the xfer pumps could be on, everything functioning correctly but with empty supply tanks and fuel in the main tank.
PS I think there is a small error in the AAIB report where they refer to Uddington, I believe they mean Uddingston. Uddington is I believe much further south.