Thank you for your letter of 7 January and the attached document.

  I can confirm that this document was prepared by the Ministry of Defence in response to questions about the cessation of test flying at Boscombe Down between April-June 1994, which the solicitor acting for Sara Cook (wife of Flt Lt Cook) asked prior to the Fatal Accident Inquiry.

  The Department has been entirely open about the background to the cessation of test flying and FADEC malfunctions, which were addressed in Annex B and the accompanying Appendix 1 of my letter to you of 27 November 2001. For information, full details of the FADEC related malfunctions were also provided to Robert Key MP following his related Parliamentary Question of 2 April 2001, in which regard the Committee may be interested to see the attached letter, D/Min(AF)/JS 1169/01/M, which was sent to him on 18 May 2001.

  The Department's strongly held view remains that the cessation of test flying at Boscombe Down, whether occasioned by the need for additional information on malfunctions or more generally about the capability of the engines, has no bearing on the cause of the Mull of Kintyre accident. The determination of the cause of the crash made by the Reviewing Officers centres on the standards of airmanship and lack of care exercised by the two pilots. There is no evidence that technical or mechanical factors played a part in this accident. Indeed it is known that at impact the engines were operating normally.

9 January 2002

  I undertook to write to you in answer to your Parliamentary Question of 2 April (Official Report, Column 24W), asking for a list of the FADEC-related nuisance faults experienced on the Chinook Mk 2 helicopter fleet in the six months up to and including 2 June 1994, with their safety significance, and whether this was understood by the crews.

  In Lewis Moonie's letter to you of 18 July 2000, he said that although some nuisance faults were experienced by crews in the early months of service, these were mainly spurious captions illuminating in the cockpit of no safety significance which were well understood. There were six such incidents during this initial period. A signal was issued on 15 December 1993 explaining the spurious illuminations, which was followed up with a further signal on 1 February 1994.

  The other FADEC-related faults during the period occurred whilst carrying out pre-flight checks on the ground. They were:

(a)  An incident of a DECU fault code showing, caused by a power interrupt. This was a soft fault and as such had no effect on the operation of the aircraft.

(b)  Four engine run-downs, and one run-up, which arose when switching to reversionary. Crews were aware this could happen and, consequently, switching to reversionary for training purposes during flight was not allowed.

(c)  A DECU fault caused by a bent pin on a conductor.

(d)  Two hung engine starts caused by an electrical harness short, which meant the engine did not complete the start cycle.

  I stress that these faults did not occur in flight. Those faults at (c) and (d) above were hardware faults, rather than arising from the operation of FADEC itself. Crews would have been advised.

  There was sufficient understanding of these faults (none of which were serious) in the early period of service of the Chinook Mk 2 to continue to operate the aircraft safely within the limitations and standard operating procedures advised by DERA Boscombe Down. There have been no instances of a total FADEC system failure in flight although minor sub-system faults have occurred. FADEC has safely accommodated these exactly as it was designed to do.

John Spellar

18 May 2001