Death plane flew in a 1640-mile spiral

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 17

Death plane flew in a 1640-mile spiral

By

PATRICK FORMAN,

“Sunday Times,” London

The full story of how a small British plane flew more than 1500 miles with two dead pilots aboard before plummeting from a height of six miles into a French vineyard, has now come to light. Radar controllers on the ground and rescue pilots in the air watched helplessly as the plane flew in a crazy pattern through 37 complete circles, its flight path stretching like an uncoiled spring from the south coast of Devon to beyond the river Loire in France, endangering people below in the Channel Islands. St Malo and the cities of Rennes and Nantes. When the two-man crew died suddenly from oxygen starvation during a training exercise, the plane should have flown straight out to sea and crashed in midAtlantic, But by a fluke, the dead hand of one of the pilots was resting on the automatic controls, making the private aircraft turn left endlessly — until it ran out of fuel. For five hours and 40 minutes, the circling plane was blown southward to where it crashed near the village of Le Tremblay — a straight-line distance of only 260 miles from its take-off at Stansted, Essex, although it was flying at 288m.p.h. and actually travelled through 1640 miles.

Alerted by the British, French radar picked up the crazy pattern on their screens as the plane crossed Jersey and five Mirage fighters were scrambled to investigate. Joined by an R.A.F. Nimrod search jet.

the fighters intercepted the runaway plane and followed it for two hours.

As they made close passes, they saw two human forms at the controls and. unaware that the two pilots were dead, tried to contact them by radio and by visual signals. As dusk fell, the fighters could see warning lights shining in the cockpit of the little turboprop. The drama began as a routine training flight in September, 1979, aboard the new 10-seat Beechcraft executive plane. Under training was Aguiar Barroe, a 43-year-old military pilot from Portugal. The instructor was Thomas Lampitt, aged 47, an airline pilot who was also a flight operations inspector with the British Civil Aviation Authority. The men had more than 9000 flying hours’ experience each. They were to depressurise the aircraft at 31,000 ft over Exmouth and demonstrate an emergency descent. The correct drill for this was to depressurise the cabin, don oxygen masks and turn on the oxygen supply, disengage the autopilot and dive to 12,000 ft where there is enough oxygen to breathe normally. As they flew over the West Country, they were given the cue to start by London, and acknowledged the go-ahead with what was to be their last message. As the plane passed over Exmouth still on autopilot, they opened the “dump valve,” which lets the air from the cabin out into the near-vacuum outside, and fitted their masks.

The rush of air can cause a dust-storm inside the cabin, making it difficult to see.. This may be one reason why the pilots failed to turn on the oxygen supply to their masks, which has to be done by groping for the right switch among many others on the ceiling of the cabin. The onset of oxygen starvation, or hypoxia, brings on euphoria, a loss of critical awareness and an irrational sense that everything is going well. Decompression takes 15 seconds. At this altitude, they would have been unconscious in another 15 seconds. In this half-min-ute, the crackling sound of a transmission from the plane was heard but nothing was said.

It was then that the plane, passing over Dawlish, began its erratic path, turning to the left and not to the right towards Exeter airport as planned. Repeated calls from London got no reply. Medical evidence suggests the pilots were now dead, six or seven minutes after starting the exercise.

More than five hours later, the plane’s fuel ran out after passing over Nantes and it spiralled almost vertically from 31,000 ft into the village vineyard of Le Tremblay.

The accident report by the French authorities says that, under British regulations, the pilots should have worn their masks continuously. The plane’s manual was not clear about pre-flight checks on the oxygen system. The report concludes that pilots should be fully briefed about hypoxia and that the exercise was too dangerous.

British aviation authorities said after the report was published last week that they were concerned that “the extreme dangers of hypoxia to pilots” were not fully understood. Its onset is insidious because the first effects create a false confidence, and pilots remain unaware of what is happening to them. Having two-pilot crews does not avert the danger because they are likely to succumb simultaneously.