It has also emerged that Captain Raymond Loverseed, 66, from Chichester, West Sussex, had narrowly escaped death in two other aviation accidents.

He was killed with 72-year-old Adam Saunders, from Toronto, Canada, when their four-engined Dash 7 turbo-prop plane slammed into a hillside near Bickington.

Captain Loverseed

Captain Loverseed led the Red Arrows from December 1970 to November 1971.

In 1984 a Buffalo transport plane he was flying crash-landed at Farnborough Air Show, just a few hundred yards from a crowd of onlookers.

Three years later Captain Loverseed survived for 16 hours with a shattered foot in a snow-covered forest in Newfoundland.

The piper Cherokee aircraft he was flying from the United States to the UK had hit a freak ice storm and plunged 9,000ft into dense pine trees, ripping off both its wings.

Accident investigation

Captain Loverseed and Mr Saunders were the only people aboard the 50-seat passenger plane which crashed on Saturday.

They had taken off from Guernsey on a 90-minute test flight which was due to finish back on the Channel Island.

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The aircraft's Black Box flight recorder has been recovered and is being examined by air accident investigators.

Devon and Cornwall police received more than 20 calls from residents and motorists on the nearby A38 Plymouth to Exeter road as the aircraft lost height and disappeared from view.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing a cloud of smoke billowing from the crash site on the edge of Dartmoor.

Rescuers attempting to reach the remote area were hampered by the terrain and emergency services vehicles had to be towed across the field by tractors.

Age limits

Richard Wright of the Civil Aviation Authority, said the crew members killed in the crash would have had to undergo a medical examination every six months from the age of 40 to retain their commercial pilot's licences.

Mr Wright said: "This was a test flight, not a revenue flight with fee-paying passengers. The age limit for flying an aircraft carrying fee-paying passengers is 65.

"But as this was a test flight with no passengers on board and providing they had passed the medicals and held the correct licence to pilot an aircraft of this type, there is no problem.

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"There are no specific upper age limits on holding a commercial pilots licence which would enable pilots to undertake test flights for instance.

"Obviously part of the air accident investigation into the crash will be to look into the question of appropriate licences and medicals."