Chinook enquiry
 

I hope Rob and Danny will allow a few days 'attention drawing' on R&N to the leaked decisions of the Lord Philip enquiry. PPRune has long supported the campaign for 'justice' for the two pilots and is, I hope, proud of its contribution. More on the Mil Forum.

To Brian and all - this has made my day.

d'acuerdo
 

Hear Hear !!!

Justice delayed is justice denied.

In this case the politics of the introduction of Chinook 2 into service, and the miltary imperatives at the time, led some very small minded senior officers to seize an opportunity to use two dead airmen to excuse an embarassing procurement disaster.

I sincerely hope that Jon Tapper and Rick Cook will be exonerated, and the circumstances that led up to that foggy hillside be laid bare for all to see.

Perhaps Jon and Rick will sleep a little sounder tonight.

16 Year old accident, poor maintenace or pride?
 

Chinook crash report 'clears pilots of blame'

Independent report expected to say pilots should not have been blamed for crash that killed 29 on Scottish hillside in 1994

The wreckage of the Chinook on the Mull of Kintyre. Photograph: Chris Bacon/PA

The Ministry of Defence has refused to confirm whether a report into a helicopter crash that killed 29 people on a coastal hillside in Scotland will conclude that the two pilots should not have been blamed.
Senior police, army and MI5 officers were among the dead when a Chinook crashed in thick fog on a remote hillside on the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994 during a flight from Belfast to Inverness.
An initial RAF inquiry in 1995 ruled that the pilots, Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook, were guilty of "gross negligence" for flying too low and too fast.
But the BBC reported that an independent inquiry, chaired by the retired judge Lord Philip, is expected to find that the pilots should not have been blamed. It is understood that the report has been passed to the defence secretary, Liam Fox, who is expected to make a statement in parliament next week.
As well as the 1995 RAF report, a fatal accident inquiry was held in 1996. In 2000, the House of Commons defence committee also investigated, as did the Lords in 2001.
In April it emerged that defence chiefs had cast doubt over the safety of Chinook helicopters two years before the crash. An apparently previously undisclosed report from 1992 suggested there were official concerns over the airworthiness of the RAF's fleet of Chinooks. It is understood the report, unearthed from the House of Commons library, was not considered in the four previous inquiries into the crash.
The RAF set up a Chinook airworthiness review team, led by a wing commander engineer, because of concerns about "overall management and maintenance" of the fleet, the papers showed. It said five accidents over six years, and "serious incidents ... brought into question" the fleet's effectiveness.
The report concerned the Mk1 model of the aircraft, but said the issues concerned "both present HC Mk1 and the future HC Mk2 version". It was a Mk2 aircraft that crashed on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994.
An MoD spokeswoman said it would be "inappropriate" to comment before Fox made his announcement to parliament.
A statement said: "The defence secretary asked Lord Philip to conduct a review of the evidence considered by the board of inquiry into the Mull of Kintyre Chinook accident. An announcement on the report's findings is due to be made to parliament shortly. Until that time it would be inappropriate to comment."
The SNP's Westminster leader and defence spokesman, Angus Robertson, who has campaigned to exonerate Tapper and Cook, said: "I hope that these reports are accurate. It is time that justice was done, and the defence secretary must finally clear the pilots of any blame.
"In light of Lord Philip's recommendations and given that the initial RAF internal finding, the fatal accident inquiry, and a House of Lords report all concluding that there was no evidence that the pilots were to blame, the position of the MoD is now untenable. It is a disgrace the way the families of Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook have been treated by successive administrations and it's time that the record was officially set straight."
The North East Fife MP, Sir Menzies Campbell, said: "If these leaks are true this represents a victory for common sense. I have always believed that the regulations of the RAF itself could not be satisfied on the information available to the board of inquiry. To eliminate every other possible cause before negligence could be established was an enormous hurdle.
"MPs and peers of all parties together with the families of the two pilots have persisted in trying to persuade the Ministry of Defence and the RAF to change their minds. This independent report is surely justification now for that to happen and for this matter at last to be put to bed. The reputations of the two pilots should now be restored."

Nil carborundum illegitimi ...

Surely the argument has been over whether it was right to label the pilots 'grossly negligent' in the absence of proof. In the absence of any evidence how can they be cleared of any blame? The suspicion must remain that they could, and in all probability were responsible for this accident. No evidence was found of a malfunction with the aircraft.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

One small voice please? We are stretching the 'hospitality' of Rob and Danny in having this thread here, and I wanted it to be purely a 'notice' to passers by of some apparent good news. In the absence of its being made a 'closed sticky' I would ask that we do not try their patience too much by holding forth on yet another 'Chinook' thread. By all means post on the mil forum thread, but this one will disappear pronto if we get too far into the 'yes they did' and 'no they didn't' stuff here.

Courtney,
why is it that you chose to post that comment on this thread and not the other one? Interesting that you feel it appropriate to blame deceased aircrew with no evidence, yet you are reluctant to restore their reputations with the same lack of evidence.

The burden of proof required the MoD to have absolutely no doubt whatsoever and the opinions of the reviewing officers fall woefully short of that requirement. It has always been up to the MoD to prove their case to the required standard and they have failed to do so in every instance.

The campaign has never claimed to know what went on in those final moments, so the guys may well have got something wrong, although we do not feel that they did. The campaign has been about clearing Rick and Jon's name and to put right that which should never have happened in the first place. Hopefully this will now be the case and the slur against their reputations will now be removed.

I have to completely agree with BOAC and thank all at PPRuNe for supporting us throughout this long campaign. Without the platform that they graciously provided, I am sure that we would have found it even more difficult than we did.

However, let's bear in mind that Lord Philip's findings have not yet been published (nor shown to the families) and we still have to wait and see the MoD response as well.

"Justice has no expiry date" - John Cook

Umm!
Interesting who was on board. Thier is a book about them the name of which escapes me.
Glad the pilots are now getting a fair deal.

I'd defend the decent folk who defend me and my kids always, but if I flew my 73 consistently too low, and consistently off course, which then subsequently crashed horizontally into fog covered terrain I'd be blamed. And if the AIB found no technical problem, my face and name would be on Discovery Channel repeats!

Crontrolled Flight Into Terrain... at high speed. Would anybody flying a helicopter with a technical fault/indication/warning continue at a great rate of knots while they were looking at solutions? Why flying a route with VIPS on a pax tasking would anybody fly below the maximum height of surrounding terrain of the route, especailly when in IMC?

My brother told me of the time he flew in a Wokka on a pax pick up/drop off sortie from the outstations in FI back to Pleasant. All the guys with their kit, wanting a safe trip so they could go where they needed to go. They got a low level nav ex, being thrown about because the crew wanted to show off to some bird on board. It wasn't operational flying training on the auth sheet!! My brother also mentioned "Cowboys" in this story.

I agree Wratten was wrong to record "Gross" without absolute proof, but the facts do add up to that of a CRM failure IMHO.

tonker,

The implications of your post are unbelievable but have been discussed endlessly over the last 9 years on the other thread.

At least, if you flew your 73 into a hill, the INDEPENDENT AAIB would investigate it objectively, looking at ALL the evidence. This would also include a CVR and FDR, a luxury not provided for the crew of the Chinook.

I agree with that entirely.

May I politely suggest the mods freeze this thread, and refer posters to the over 400 pages in the appropriate thread on the mil aviation section, where such tendentious statements have been comprehensively discussed and the errors in those making excuses for the appalling original overruling of the BOI verdict by two senior officers, and the equally appaling history of non-adherence to airworthiness regulation have been laid out in detail.

Seconded. message too short so this bit added

And that gets my vote. :ok: