BOEING SIMULATION

  Your first question concerned the Boeing simulation and you asked who commissioned this and what was the specification. I spoke to Gp Capt Pulford, the President of the RAF Board of Inquiry, and he said that the Board did not give Boeing Helicopters any written specification, but rather commissioned the work, through Tony Cable (Air Accidents Investigation Branch). Also that Boeing will have been presented with all the evidence that had been found, such as the rate of change of the actuators etc, and were asked to find a scenario that matched this detail.

  I subsequently contacted the Air Accidents Investigation Branch who confirmed that Mr Cable recalls that much of the early discussion on the simulation runs was conducted verbally between himself and the Board and Boeing. Mr Cable did, however, confirm the helicopter and impact data in a fax to Boeing dated 15 August 1994. A copy of that fax is attached at Annex A.

1 November 2001