The Hawker Siddeley Trident suffered a deep . Eventually, it entered a flat spin, and appeared to be about to crash, but a wing dropped during the stall, and when corrected with rudder the other wing dropped. [70] The failure indications might have appeared just prior to take-off and could have accounted for the two-minute delay at the end of the runway. Proceedings were often adversarial, with counsel for victims' families regularly attempting to secure positions for future litigation, and deadlines were frequently imposed on investigators. was not taken, it would then push the [72][74] The report noted that Collins' body was found to be holding a can of aerosol air freshener in its right hand. aircraft rapidly pitched up in excess of that the stick-shaker/pusher system was aircraft into a stalled condition which This was the final happened on the flightdeck of 548. [21], All 118 persons aboard the aircraft were killed: 112 passengers and six crew members. [43] Sources close to the events of the time suggest that Collins played an altogether more positive role by attempting to lower the leading-edge devices in the final seconds of the flight; Eric Pritchard, a Trident captain who happened to be the first airman at the accident site, recalled that a fireman had stated that Collins was lying across the centre pedestal and noted himself that his earphones had fallen into the right-hand-side footwell of the flight deck, diagonally across from the observer's seat, as might be expected if he had attempted to intervene as a last resort. You could have reached up and touched it." [73] Although the report covered the state of industrial relations at BEA, no mention was made of it in its conclusions, despite the feelings of observers that it intruded directly and comprehensively onto the aircraft's flight deck. All on board were killed, though nobody on the ground. Further analysis of the FDR showed that . between employees of British European All 118 people on board were killed. distracted the crew from flying the During taxi, at 16:06 the flight received its departure route clearance: a routing known as the "Dover One Standard Instrument Departure". (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
, 2014-2022 UK Aviation News | A Max Thrust Digital Production | Hosted and Maintained by Newport Digital. [47] There was no fire on impact, but one broke out during the rescue effort when cutting apparatus was used. the "monitoring" position. [1] To help train newly qualified co-pilots, SFOs were told to occupy only the third flight-deck seat of the Trident as a "P3", operating the aircraft's systems and helping the captain (known as "P1" on the BEA Trident fleet) and the co-pilot ("P2") who handled the aircraft. maximum of 170kts before reducing power retraction speed is clearly placarded on Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. All 118 passengers and crew died on BEA flight 548 making it Britain's deadliest air accident ever . "The street was well pre-WOODEN TOYS cally, both the countries have . One man was taken out of the wreckage with head injuries but died in hospital. A mobile crane was brought into the field to lift parts of the wreckage away; the rescuers could not use oxyacetylene cutters because of the risk of an explosion. with the recent strife between On 14 July, the High Court Judge Sir Geoffrey Lane was appointed to preside over the inquiry as Commissioner. examination of the wreckage that the We were out with the dog and I looked up and saw the plane. concluded, it is clear that something Conditions were turbulent, with driving rain and a low cloud base of 1,000 feet (300m); broken cloud was also reported at 600 feet (180m), and the official report says that the crew would have been without any visual reference at "crucial times" during the flight. The even prior to the retraction of the At 16:10:47 (137 seconds) and 1,000 feet (305m), the Trident was descending at 4,500 feet per minute (23m/s). The crash took place against the background of a pilots' strike that had caused bad feelings between crew members. [50] Reports that the public impeded rescue services were dismissed during the inquiry. Its members visited the reassembled wreckage of G-ARPI at Farnborough and were followed by the press throughout their movements. That Captain Key was suffering from a heart condition. turned the system off. retracted. "monitoring" pilot's job was to observe configuration. Another recommendation was for greater caution before allowing off-duty crew members to occupy flight deck seats.