COPTER CRASH: DAMNING REPORT
Emergency landing and fire ‘accident waiting to happen’ says MoD panel:
AN RAF helicopter which burst into flames on a mountain in Snowdonia was “an accident waiting to happen”, a damning report has found.
The Griffin helicopter was destroyed after being engulfed in fire following an emergency landing during a training mission on Yr Aran in 2016.
Four military personnel and one civilian managed to escape unhurt following the blaze, but a Ministry of Defence panel warned the situation could have been far worse.
Their report found there had been a structural failure of the “main rotor gear box support case in two or more locations”, which led to unrestrained movement of the gearbox and led to the incident.
This was followed by an “uncontrolled aircraft fire”.
The panel said: “Although this was an unremarkable sortie in terms of its complexity, and conducted in benign weather conditions, Griffin ZJ241 was an accident waiting to happen.
“It only took an attempted landing on a slope, which was outside the aircraft’s permitted limits, to initiate a sequence of events that led to its destruction.
“Once this sequence had started, there was nothing the aircrew could have reasonably done to prevent the accident from occurring.”
They said that immediate actions taken by “Commander A” on the aircraft “and his decision to land the aircraft, “reduced the likelihood of more serious injury and, possibly, loss of life”.
The report stated that the flight, which involved a student pilot and crewmen with instructors, would see a “passenger” picked up from the top of the mountain before flying to a separate site in the Betws y Coed area.
As the student pilot came in to land, two loud bangs were reported to be heard and the aircraft began to vibrate in a vertical motion.
The aircraft commander first called for the student to return to hovering, but, after deciding the flight was no longer safe, the aircraft was landed.
While the helicopter was being shut down, a small fire was noticed and the cockpit began to rapidly fill with thick smoke.
The crew were forced to scramble out of the helicopter as the blaze spread.
In publishing their report, the panel made a number of technical recommendations in order to prevent such an incident from happening again.
Following the crash, a huge rescue operation had to be car- Pictures: Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team/ PA Wire (main) and Ted McGowan (inset) ried out in order to bring the helicopter from the mountain top.
It included cutting the helicopter into pieces and transporting it via a Chinook.