Wrong engine shut off before fatal air crash
12:01AM BST 31 Jul 2001
MISLEADING instrument readings may have led an experienced captain to take action against an engine working normally moments before an eight-death air crash, an accident report said today.
Capt John Easson, 49, seemed to have reacted initially to a perceived loss of power from the right-hand engine in the Cessna 404 Titan crash in which five stewardesses from the airline Airtours were killed.
But it was the left engine that had suffered a catastrophic failure in the accident near Glasgow airport, from where the aircraft had just taken off on Sept 2, 1999.
When Capt Easson, of Bryde, Isle of Man, who was taking the Airtours crew to Aberdeen, feathered the right-hand engine there was a total loss of thrust, said the report from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
He tried to return to Glasgow, but the plane went down in a field, bursting into flames. A post-accident inspection "did not reveal any mechanical evidence of a problem with the right engine".
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An Airtours captain and two Airtours stewards were injured but got clear of the plane and survived. But Capt Easson, his co-pilot, five stewardesses and another Airtours captain all died.
The five stewardesses who died, who all lived in Strathclyde, were Pauline MacIver, 31, from Stevenston; mother-of-three Pauline Moyes, 38, from Ranton; newly-wed Linda Taylor, 29, from Troon; Helen Steven, 28, of Helensburgh; and Lynn McCulloch, 23, of Kirkintilloch.
Also killed was Colin Finnie, an Airtours pilot and father of three from Irvine, Strathclyde. The co-pilot, who also died, was Bill Henderson, 54, a father of four, of Lower Largo, Fife. The AAIB also said that all the passenger seats had come loose from the floor of the aircraft.
The aircraft was operated by the Edinburgh Air Charter company and was taking the Airtours staff to Aberdeen to connect with a holiday flight to Majorca.
Today's report praised a farm worker who helped rescue survivors before being beaten back by flames. The AAIB said the plane did not have, nor was required to have, flight recorders.
The board recommended that such aircraft should at least have a cockpit voice recorder and that the Civil Aviation Authority should look at the whole question of safer seats.
Wrong engine shut off before fatal air crash - Telegraph