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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1398.PDF
FLIGHT, 20 July 1951 CIVIL AVIATION MILL HILL DAKOTA—COURT FINDINGS THE report of the Court Investigation on the accident toB.E.A.'s Dakota G-AGIW, which occurred on October 17th, 1950, was published by the M.C.A. last week.* It will be recalled that the aircraft crashed into trees at Mill Hill while attempting to return to Northolt following a failure of the starboard engine a few minutes after take-off. Twenty-eight of the 29 occupants lost their lives. The primary cause of the accident is considered by the Court to have been the failure of the master-rod bearings in the star- board engine—an occurrence of which the report states, "this failure could not have been foreseen or guarded against by any greater exercise of vigilance than could reasonably have been required of B.E.A." The secondary probable causes are listed as being the failure of the pilots to: (a) make an immediate visual landing on realizing that the starboard engine had failedj (b) make use of S.B.A.; (c) retract the undercarriage while flying away from the airport over a distance necessary to bring their aircraft under the effective control of G.C.A., which the pilots had already elected to use as their let-down aid. It was also thought possible that the glazed lead deposition on the sparking plugs in the port engine was indicative of possible ignition trouble which may have caused a loss of power sufficient to prevent the aircraft from maintaining level flight. It was stressed that the loss of G-AGIW could not be ascribed to any one cause, and that an explanation of the accident must be sought in a number of coincident factors, none of which would in itself have been sufficient to bring about the crash. There was also a finding to the effect that the First Officer (whose licence, incidentally, had lapsed five days previously) had a training record which made it inadvisable that he should have been permitted to handle the aircraft if I.F.R. conditions were likely to be met almost immediately after take-off. Some of the comments and general recommendations made by the Board have been accorded rather spectacular publicity in the national Press, and this has tended to give the unfortunate impression that, in some aspects, B.E.A.'s operating methods leave something to be desired. As in many reports of this nature, the implications are probably more serious than the actual wording suggests, but, on the factual side, there are certainly points which, in fairness to B.E.A., seem to deserve an airing. The first of these concerns the question of cockpit discipline, of which the Court says it has been left with "a sense of disquiet" about the existing arrangements for determining the relative responsibilities of the Captain and First Officer of a Dakota in an emergency. The Court appears to have some misgivings about B.E.A.'s former system, under which responsibility "followed the seat" and not the status of the pilot. (Out of deference to the Court's recommendation on the subject, the Corporation has since ruled that, in future, Captains will occupy the left-hand seat throughout the entire flight.) In practice, of course, the Dakota is equally controllable from either seat and it is hardly likely that in this case the Captain was not able to take complete control of the situation. The fact that the First Officer's licence had lapsed was due to a clerical omission in B.E.A.'s checking system, but certainly was not a contributary cause of the accident. Although the training record of the First Officer in question was held to be unsatisfactory, it should be pointed out that he was in possession of an Instrument Rating, and the check which he had failed was purely a periodic check imposed privately by the Corporation. An examination of the wreckage made it almost certain that the undercarriage was locked down at the moment of impact. The Court believes that the first intention was to make an immediate visual landing on Runway 26, for which, in fact, the undercarriage was lowered. Either because the pilots lost sight of the airport, or because they preferred to rely on G.C.A., a full left-hand circuit was never made and the aircraft continued to fly down- wind, passing uncomfortably close to high ground. it is thought possible that, faced with this hazard, both pilots "M.C.A.Ps'i; obtainable from His Majesty's Stationery Office, price is. 3d. FIRST OFF a new production line at the Glenn L Martin Company's Baltimore factory is this 40-seat 4-0-4 destined for T.W.A. Three operators have ordered a total of 103 of these machines. Maximum cruising speed is 280 m.p.h. and gross weight is 42,750 Ib. forgot the position of the undercarriage and made no attempt to retract it a second time. It has been found that under test conditions at 28,000 lb a.u.w., the Dakota will, in the one-engine-out condition, maintain height at rated power with undercarriage down and gills "trailed." Some doubt exists as to whether the port engine was actually developing full power at the time of the accident and, in this connection, it has been suggested that the condition of some of the sparking plugs in the port engine might have caused a loss of power. It was also recommended that a more satisfactory method of plug- cleaning might be adopted than the sand-blasting technique now employed. It should be pointed out that this method has been fully approved by the A.R.B. for this type of plug (Lodge RS/19/ 2R) and that the plug-life experienced with them hitherto has been entirely satisfactory. "Failure of the pilots to use S.B.A." is another point on which many pilots will certainly disagree. Under the duress of an emergency landing, and knowing that, at its maximum a.u.w., the Dakota requires more than the normal quota of concentration to maintain height, it is hardly likely, nor even advisable, that in close proximity to an airport providing G.C.A. facilities, a pilot should attempt to start searching for the beam and carrying out the procedure entailed in an S.B.A. The decision to resort to G.C.A., as Capt. Carson did in this case, is taken to indicate that he was intending to act in accordance with B.E.A. Standing Orders to climb to 1,500ft before selecting his method of landing. In conclusion, the report draws attention once again to the question of rearward-facing seats in passenger aircraft. It recom- mends strongly that seats of this type should be stressed "to with- stand the deceleration which can be reasonably expected in an air crash without attempting to arrive at a computation of the figure of stress which might have been necessary to save lives in the present case." The Court records its impression that the figure of 9 g., mentioned by an A.R.B. witness, is too low. As Mr. Roland Adams, K.C., president of the Court of Investiga- tion, points out in his introductory letter to the Minister of Civil Aviation, the fact that the Court failed to determine the pre- dominant cause of the accident does not preclude its findings from serving as a basis for useful discussion to the general end of securing greater flying safety. We feel that some of the observations and recommendations which were of a general nature have, in some quarters, tended to cause undue emphasis to be placed upon comparatively irrelevant matters. This, in turn, has reflected unfavourably and to some extent unjustly on B.E.A. THE CORPORATIONS' TRAFFIC IN 1950 THE provisional traffic figures—announced last week by theM.C.A.—for the operations of B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. during the financial year ended March 31st, 1951, show that together the Corporations handled about one-third more traffic than in the previous year. Passenger-mileage flown totalled 835 million—an increase of 32 per cent, while freight ton-miles rose by 30 per cent to 24 million; mail ton-miles, at 13 million, represented an increase of 18 per cent. The overall revenue load-factor rose from 57 per cent to 59 per cent, but the passenger load-factor showed a decrease of 5 to a new figure of 57 per cent. A break-down of these totals between the two operators shows that B.O.A.C. enjoyed a more substantial improvement than did B.E.A. The total of revenue load ton-miles total flown by B.O.A.C. rose by 31 per cent to 84 million, while B.E.A.'s traffic increased by 25 per cent to 28 million load ton-miles. The respec- tive passenger load-factors for B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. were 56 and 58 per cent; the totals of passengers carried were 196,000 and 940,000 respectively.
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