JDC'S REACTION AFTER LISTENING TO THE EVIDENCE OFFERED BY THE TWO AIR MARSHALS

  Weather conditions, aircraft behaviour and noise require detailed examination before any assessment can be made. Certainly not vague generalisations.

  Sir William quoted ten? "witnesses" on the Mull who persuaded him that the Chinook was flying in IFR below the safety height. Sir William did not produce a map to show exactly where the witnesses were on the Mull. Neither what they actually witnessed, or how reliable was their evidence. Elsewhere the MoD claims that none of the witnesses had noticed any change of engine noise. If the aircraft were flying towards them they would only have heard the slap of the rotors. One only hears the engine noise as they go overhead—odd that not one of the witnesses heard the very loud increase in noise generated by a flare manoeuvre!

  Nobody—of course—was viewing the weather from the same point as the crew at the same time.

  The judgment of witnesses regarding the aircraft's height and speed, the visibility, the cloud height and the time are likely to be very unreliable. It is difficult to know how much exposure they had experienced from media coverage. Had there been any collusion? It is quite impossible to detect any small control movements unless you are very close to the scene.

  As the handling pilot Rick would have been "eyeballing" the area ahead and watching out for the coastline under the lighthouse. Having approached it he would have wanted to turn immediately left and fly with the coastline down to his right hand side. Had any cloud or precipitation blocked his view then he would have turned immediately hard left and away from the Mull. Over the intercom the crew would have been discussing the progress of the flight, remarking on the weather in the Mull area and what they were approaching and passing eg fishing boats, yachts etc.

  They might have changed the waypoint—no positive evidence that they did. To rely on the navigation systems for proof of negligence requires you to accept Sir William's assumption that "they had deliberately entered cloud below safety height":

—  not for one moment would Rick have done that;

—  neither would he have allowed anyone else to do it to him; and

—  neither would he have deliberately crossed the coast. Neither would Jonathan or the two crewmen.

  Endless talks with Rick convince me that this is "FACT". By blaming the pilots the Air Marshals closed the matter to further investigation, thereby also compromising safety. Who or what were they protecting?

  The Boeing mathematical simulation is exactly that. A simulation depends on what you want it to be. In this case they simulated what is believed to be the initial conditions and control inputs. What other initial conditions were tried with what variety of dynamic inputs? Were the chosen examples the ones that suited those who did not want the investigators to look at the whole aircraft too closely?

  What proof is there of a continuous 1,000 foot/minute climb from the Waypoint change to the flare? How can one know that the aircraft was not upside down? Going sideways? Or indeed out of control? Would one be wrong to suggest that a single upper boost actuator could have the same effect as a complete control jam? If a movement of the collective lever causes the aircraft to pitch and roll would that not stop the crew from any further movement of the controls? It would only have to be a momentary glitch in the system to cause utter confusion. As one is led to believe that the actuators were fire damaged would the investigator find proof of damage?

  Look at the case in 1997 of the US CH-47 (Chinook) that miraculously returned to a wheels down attitude at 250 ft after rolling totally out of control! After two years of intensive investigation no fault could be found—on a whole aircraft!

  Aside from blaming the pilots the Air Marshals offer no explanation as to why:

—  No "left turn"?

—  The aircraft continued to fly straight on to the Mull?

—  Increase of speed?

  Had not the Air Marshals been following some other agenda but looking after their subordinates' interests, the investigation might have continued to a factual explanation.

  BoI Reference: Remarks by Air Officer Commanding—Section 4, Chapter 6, Sir John Day states: "Therefore, I am satisfied that inadequacies in supervision, training or flying standards did not contribute to this accident".

  Having been the Training Manager on the Concorde Fleet for five years, I find this statement to be totally incomprehensible and dare I say—arrogant. Training is never static. It is forever being finely tuned. Of course, one cannot deny that a potential maverick might slip through the selection and training programme, BUT a whole crew? That to me would prove a serious flaw.

  Had the Concorde experience been akin to that of the Mk2 and no technical fault found, I would have given the benefit of the doubt to my loyal and highly experienced crew.

SCENARIO

  Having reached the point off the coast where he wanted to turn left—Rick applies left cyclic, but finds that this causes the nose to pitch down and right yaw, because, unknown to him, an upper boost actuator has stuck. Not necessarily at that moment, it could have happened before, but would not have been apparent due to the small control inputs whilst flying straight and level in the cruise. He then applied back cyclic to flare but found this caused right roll and yaw. He then applies UP collective and finds that increases right roll, yaw and pitches the nose down. He is forced to centralise the controls for a few seconds to avoid loss of control but he has already got an increase of speed and a rate of climb—maybe 1,000 ft/min. Jam clears and he starts an emergency climb—alas too late.

Captain J D Cook

9 October 2001