Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Pilot tells of moments before fatal plane crash
AN experienced pilot has described to an inquest 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 the Empire Test Pilots’ School at Boscombe Down, on a demonstration flight of the Soviet Union-designed plane.
The inquest in Salisbury, Wiltshire, has heard the school - the oldest in the world - was run by Qinetiq on behalf of the Ministry of Defence and had sub-contracted the supply of the Yak52 to Command Pilot Training.
That firm contracted Mr Calverley to supply and pilot the Yak-52 and he hired it from owner Martin Gadsby.
The hearing has heard that RAF crew who were on the test pilots’ course had noticed problems with the “unserviceability” of some of the instruments of the Yak-52 days before the fatal crash but had not reported them to their superiors.
Mr Calverley, who was seriously injured in the incident, told the inquest he was aware of problems with the instruments but insisted they played no role in causing the crash.
“I think that what I had for breakfast that morning was of more relevance to the accident than those instruments,” he said.
“When the engine failed, none of those instruments had any relevance whatsoever.”
Mr Calverley said he had a “vivid and precise” memory of everything that happened prior to a few seconds before the Yak-52 hit the ground.
He told the inquest that he and Flt Lt Parr were flying at around 4,000ft and were planning on climbing to carry out a flat spin when the plane suffered engine failure.
“I recall that my initial reaction was that we had fuel starvation. I would check the position of the lever because Alex was flying,” he said.
“Very, very quickly having had that intuitive feeling, Alex declared - because he was very attuned into checking instruments - ‘zero fuel pressure’.
“I said, ‘Let’s head for Boscombe and declare May Day’. I asked him to help pump the fuel handle.”
Mr Calverley said he thought some of the fuel valves maybe blocked and performed some manoeuvres to try to fix it but that did not work, so he decided they had to undertake a forced landing.
He said they spotted a wheat field at Dinton and decided to land there but as they made the approach he realised there was a landing strip and attempted to use that instead.
“I think it is common sense to land on the airstrip than in an unlevel field,” he said.
“I am pretty sure at this point I would have taken control back because I am the more experienced at manoeuvring the Yak.
“It would have been nice to have spotted that strip at 1,000ft.
“My last recollection was making quite a tight manoeuvre towards the strip to make a landing on the strip and my memory is wiped out because of the crash.
“I have no recollection of the final approach.”
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 seconds to make a decision. It could have been a very good decision but in retrospect it may have been better to continue with the wheat field.
“It was a forced landing that went wrong. We had a choice of a nicelooking level airstrip or an unknown wheat field.
“In retrospect it was the wrong decision and I don’t deny that.”
Flt Lt Parr, a married father of three who lived in Marlborough, had been a pilot for 20 years and suffered fatal injuries after being thrown from the aircraft during the landing.