Chinook ZD576: Select Committee Report

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 10:37 pm on 5 November 2002.

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Photo of Lord Glenarthur Lord Glenarthur Conservative 10:37, 5 November 2002

My Lords, it is with a degree of reluctance that I take part in the debate. I have followed closely the history and substance of the various inquiries that have taken place to establish the cause of this tragic accident. Like other noble Lords, I feel desperately sorry for all those who, eight years on, are still affected by the uncertainty engendered by the continuing debate on what really happened and how any blame might be attributed.

I refer not only to the families of the helicopter crew but also to the families of passengers in the aircraft and to all those who have had the unenviable task of pulling together in colossal detail the facts as they see them and reaching conclusions about why it occurred, which, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, said, their duty required of them.

I have had considerable practical experience in the helicopter world. It might be helpful to your Lordships if I were to explain that. I have been a helicopter pilot since 1968. I have flown with the Army for five years and, latterly between 1976 and 1982, with what was then British Airways Helicopters. I have in excess of 4,000 hours' flying time mixed roughly half-and-half between light military helicopters and large commercial helicopters, and I have held an instrument rating. I also have a few hundred hours' fixed wing experience.

My licences are not now current, but I have been for the past 10 years chairman of the British Helicopter Advisory Board, which is the trade association for all the commercial helicopter operators in the United Kingdom, and, through that, chairman for six years of the European Helicopter Association which is a grouping of associations throughout Europe similar to the British Helicopter Advisory Board. For several years I have also been chairman of the International Federation of Helicopter Associations, which deals with international regulatory issues and has observer status at the International Civil Aviation Organisation. I am also a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, on the Council of the Air League, and a Liveryman of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. So, in a sense, the practical operation of helicopters has formed a very large part of my working life.

I appreciate that the responsibilities that I have described are primarily concerned with civilian helicopter operations, but there is one concept that goes above and beyond any differentiation between the two types of flying and is common to both. I refer to the concept of airmanship, to which I shall return later.

Most experienced aviators agree that it is not one single factor which causes an accident, but a combination of factors. It would be possible to give examples, but, in the case of the Chinook accident, poor weather, low flying, a time factor, and, for whatever reason, a degree of uncertainty about precise position, were all factors conspiring against the crew; a combination of hazards from which perfectly clear rules were there to protect them.

I have had considerable experience of flying in command of helicopters on the North Sea. I have not flown the Chinook, although it was introduced on to the North Sea in its civil version—the Boeing Vertol 234—during my time. I flew the Sikorsky S61N, which is capable of carrying in excess of 20 passengers with a fairly sophisticated instrument fit. It was equipped with an automatic flight control system, but not with an automatic pilot. So it was broadly similar to the equipment in the Chinook accident in question.

We used cloud-break procedures down to a very low level of about 200 feet in order to make an approach to oil platforms. Unlike military Chinooks, we were equipped with weather radar, which enabled us to have a clear picture of the platform that we were approaching. However, all of us became very used to appreciating the marked difference in forward visibility between, for example, a height of 300 feet, where visibility might be extremely limited, and perhaps 200 feet where there was substantial forward visibility—a set of circumstances not dissimilar to the experience of the yachtsman near the Mull of Kintyre at the time of the accident. The same was also true of approaches towards land in the event of bad weather where it was not possible to climb—for example, because of a freezing level near the surface in the winter—or for other weather reasons that required us to follow the coast back towards the airfield at low level.

I have read the board of inquiry's report, the written evidence given to your Lordships' Select Committee, the Government's response to that report, and almost every other piece that has been written about the accident. I have also had conversations with many experts in the field. From all that has been said and written, it is perfectly clear that there is no evidence whatsoever of any technical failure that is likely to have caused, or contributed to, the accident. I am the first to appreciate that there have been a number of instances involving aspects of the Chinook Mk 2's introduction into service which at one point or another in the process of release to the service might have given rise to anxiety. But it is my clear opinion, as it is also of the air marshals, that none of them is strictly relevant to this accident.

This is where I turn to the matter of airmanship, which was also referred to my the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, and, in particular, its relevance to the rules that govern safe flight under visual meteorological conditions. Those rules were clearly set out on slides shown to the Select Committee by Air Chief Marshal Sir John Day, and are shown on page 115 of the Select Committee's examination of witnesses document. Such rules are clear and unequivocal. They are not guidance; they are not woolly advice that a military pilot might, or might not, choose to follow. They are an instruction, and they are there to prevent inadvertent collision between either the subject aircraft and another one, the surface, or anything in the aircraft's path by allowing opportunity for avoiding action.

Those rules allow for the possibility that the pilot of an aircraft becomes unsure of his exact position—something which can happen to any pilot, irrespective of the quality or complexity of the navigation equipment that he has on board. They are the only guarantee by which a pilot flying under those conditions can be certain of avoiding imperilling himself and his aircraft.

Those rules cater for different speeds. Strict adherence to them ensures that the pilot of an aircraft could take whatever action is necessary under any circumstances to avoid hitting either the surface or anything in his way. Any failure of equipment, change in handling characteristics or other untoward event would, if strict visual meteorological conditions had been maintained, allow the pilot either to climb at once to his minimum safe altitude, to turn away or, most likely, a combination of both, particularly if inadvertently he had entered cloud or breached the minima for visual flight close to a known obstacle.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, I have to say that it is wholly incredible to suppose that, just because the pilots were very experienced and considered highly efficient, they might not have breached those strict rules. I fear that most of us with considerable flying experience have probably stretched the limits of visual flight rules at times and got away with it. I plead guilty to stupidity and to breaching these rules as a young Army pilot. Once, when rated of above-average ability, I allowed my judgment to slip, entered cloud deliberately and very nearly hit the ground, when undoubtedly I would have killed myself. I was the only person on board the aircraft at the time, but that momentary lack of judgment and over-confidence was a terrifying lesson on why such stringent rules exist.

When we talk about military aircraft, it is important always to remember that we are concerned with disciplined services, where rules are absolute and to be obeyed unless there is a very good operational reason for doing otherwise. By no stretch of the imagination can I, or very many others to whom I have spoken, conceive of any reason for flying a large helicopter, with or without passengers, at speed and at low level into doubtful visual meteorological conditions, probably breaching them, and entering cloud while approaching land from the sea, below the minimum safe altitude. It is, frankly, incredible; it exhibits a lack of attention to the concept of airmanship which is, or should be, dinned into the minds of all military and civil pilots throughout their flying careers, and which may be difficult for people not so familiar with flying to comprehend fully.

More than that, within a disciplined military ethos, those who determine causes of, and review, accidents are charged with a very real responsibility. As we heard, a board of inquiry is not a court of law. Its review by senior officers is a crucial element in the process and cannot be tackled with undue sensitivity. I cannot believe that it was with anything other than enormous regret that Air Marshals Wratten and Day reached their conclusions. There was no credible alternative. They had a duty to report as they saw fit, within the existing range of options open to them, using their very best experience and that of those around them. To my mind, it is not only perfectly justifiable, but it is only proper, that such a serious breach of the rules for visual flight should be regarded as negligent, and, under the terms of such a report being produced at that time, considered grossly negligent. If those rules had not been breached, there is no doubt that the accident would not have happened.

It gives me no pleasure whatever to disagree so strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, for whom I have had enormous admiration over the years, and in part to cause further distress to the families of everyone concerned. But I have been closely involved with flying helicopters almost continuously for 34 years and I support 100 per cent the conclusions that the Government, through the Ministry of Defence, have reached in response to the Select Committee report. I very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, will not divide the House on his amendment. I cannot see that, even if the House votes for the amendment, it is likely to change the way things are. It is likely to cause further prolonged grief, uncertainty and anguish for all concerned, and that would be a step that I, for one, would most heartily regret.

Vast amounts of time have been spent examining this accident, not least by the Select Committee of your Lordships' House. Its report was very thorough, but, with the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle, it concentrated on a series of supplementary issues that were incidental to the fundamental breach of airmanship and the strict rules governing visual flight at low level, which, I am afraid, was the ultimate cause of the accident and, thereby, the inevitable and proper verdict of the air marshals.

When I was commanding a squadron of Army helicopters, I had framed on the wall opposite my desk the saying:

"Aviation is not, of itself, inherently dangerous but to an even greater degree than the sea is very unforgiving of any incapacity, carelessness or neglect".

I am sad to say that this tragic accident falls clearly within the ambit of those words.