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'Pilot error' finding repeated

Defence Procurement Minister Lord Gilbert rejected a call to re-open an inquiry despite claims of new evidence suggesting a computer software fault was to blame.

Lord Gilbert told the Lords he had not had the chance to study the evidence, gathered by Computer Weekly and Channel Four News.

But he said he had been told by those who had studied it that there was "nothing new in the report whatsoever".

He was responding to cross-bencher Lord Chalfont, who urged him to reconvene the Board of Inquiry which examined the cause of the crash and found in 1997 that pilot negligence was to blame.

The aircraft was flying to Inverness from Ulster when it crashed in thick mist. All 29 people on board the helicopter died, including some of Northern Ireland's most senior police and intelligence experts.

The pilots - Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook - were said to be to blame but the conclusion has been strongly contested by their families and some politicians.

Lord Gilbert said: "I have no difficulty whatever in standing up once again at this despatch box and reaffirming that it is the view of the present government - as it was the view of the previous Government - that, tragic as it is, that accident was due to pilot negligence.

"There is no question whatever that, even if one assumed that there had been a catastrophic failure in the software, that does not alter the case - that plane should not have been where it was, flying at that height in that weather on that heading."

Security officers

But he conceded lessons were to be learned about not putting so many important security officers on one flight.

Based on the limited evidence, the inquiry said the wrong rate of climb was the most likely cause. It decided that although technical malfunction was unlikely, it could not be positively disproved.

Computer Weekly reported last month that the helicopter's engine control software may have been the cause of the crash.

Executive Editor Tony Collins said with the benefit of hindsight new evidence had come to light which was not available to crash investigators.

"If the engines receive a signal from the software telling them to accelerate when the pilots don't want to, the only way they can bring down the speed is to go into cloud in a way which they don't want to," he said.

"That has not been generally understood. It has been thought that if the software fails, it would fail in a predictable manner."

Mr Collins said he did not think the inquiry had been deliberately misled but it was clear that crash investigators have difficulties when examining computer software after an accident.

"Gross negligence can only be brought if there's no doubt whatsoever as to the cause of the crash," he told the BBC.

Verdict 'unsafe'

"In this case, there are too many uncertainties and the evidence that we have highlighted proves that the evidence on which the verdict was based is inconclusive.

"We are saying that the verdict of gross negligence is manifestly and demonstrably unsafe."

Computer Weekly also questioned whether the aircraft should even have been allowed to fly as it believes evidence from America should have alerted the army to the potential software problems.

Other theories which were rejected at the time of the inquiry included interference from laptop computers, mobile phones, submarine communications and the possibility of a passenger bursting into the cockpit.

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Air Accident Investigations Branch
Ministry of Defence
Computer Weekly

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