Pilot tells of forced landing that killed RAF officer

AN EXPERIENCED pilot told an inquest about the moments before a plane suffered engine failure during a training flight and crashed, killing an RAF officer.

Flight Lieutenant Alex Parr, 40, died when the Yak-52 civilian aircraft crashed during an emergency landing close to Dinton airfield in Wiltshire in July 2016.

John Calverley, 62, an experienced Yak-52 civilian pilot and acrobatic champion, was in command of the exercise. He was taking Flt Lt Parr, a tutor at Empire Test Pilots’ School at Boscombe Down, on a demonstration flight of the Soviet-designed plane.

Mr Calverley, who was seriously injured, said he was aware of problems with the instruments but insisted they played no role in causing the crash.

“When the engine failed, none of those instruments had any relevance whatsoever,” he said.

The inquest in Salisbury, Wiltshire, has heard the school was run by Qinetiq for the Ministry of Defence and had sub-contracted the supply of the Yak-52 to Command Pilot Training. That firm contracted Mr Calverley to supply and pilot the hired plane.

Mr Calverley said they were flying at around 4,000ft when the plane suffered engine failure. He thought some of the fuel valves may be blocked and was unable to fix it, so decided they had to undertake a forced landing.

The pilot said they decided to land in a wheat field at Dinton, but then spotted a landing strip.

“My last recollection was making quite a tight manoeuvre towards the strip to make a landing on the strip,” he said.

John Cooper QC, representing Flt Lt Parr’s widow Alice, asked Mr Calverley: “This was not a forced landing that went wrong, it was a crash caused by you making a bad decision?”

He replied: “We had a choice of a nice-looking level airstrip or an unknown wheat field. In retrospect, it was the wrong decision and I don’t deny that.”

Flt Lt Parr, a father-of-three living in Marlborough, was thrown from the plane and fatally hurt.