Ministry denies RAF warning on Chinooks

It was reported yesterday that the RAF warned pilots of a fault that could affect the safe operation of the Chinook Mark 2 helicopters seven months before the Mull of Kintyre crash.

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.

The pilots were cleared in July last year after a review by Lord Philip ruled it was impossible to know what had happened.

But it was claimed yesterday that a “special instruction” was issued to RAF aircrew in November 1993 warning that a connector on the digital engine control unit had “worked loose in flight”.

Jimmy Jones, a former RAF engineer who obtained the documents under Freedom of Information legislation, said: “This aircraft could not be described as airworthy.”

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 House of Lords in 2001.

In April it emerged that defence chiefs 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 two years before the fatal crash.

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” including uncommanded flying control movements “brought into question” the effectiveness of the fleet. The report concerned the Mark 1 model, but says the issues concern “both present HC Mk1 and the future HC Mk 2 version”.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “Exhaustive investigations have been completed into the tragic Mull of Kintyre incident, in which no evidence of technical or mechanical failure were identified.

“Since the accident, the Chinook aircraft has had an excellent safety record and continues to be a mainstay of operations, having the full confidence of those who fly it.”

The SNP’s Westminster leader and defence spokesman Angus Robertson said the findings were “shocking”.