Letter: Chinook errors

IAN Taylor (Letters, 22 July) is mistaken about the series of inquiries that followed the original RAF investigation into the Chinook crash.

None of them were appeals; they were all independent inquiries by different groups for different purposes with no power to overturn the original verdict. The Ministry of Defence was not even obliged to accept Lord Philip's recent legalistic conclusion, and I do not know why it did so.

The government had previously stood by the verdict because RAF inquiries cannot be reopened unless new evidence is produced. Even now, although the particular accusation against pilots has been set aside, the accident remains unexplained and could still be attributed to pilot error, if there were evidence for it.

STEUART CAMPBELL

Dovecot Loan

Edinburgh