AEROPLANE DISASTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18941, 12 February 1925, Page 9

AEROPLANE DISASTER.

OFFICIALS NOT TO BLAME. RESULT OF INVESTIGATION. (Received 55.35 p.m.) Reuter. LONDON. Feb. -10. The report of the investigation by the Air Ministry into the Croydon areoplane disaster on Christmas Eve says that no Air Ministry or Imperial Airways official was in any way negligent and no blame is attributable to 4lie pilot. The dive earthward was due to loss of control combined with a "stall." While the pilot , was trying to make a forced landing some defect developed, but there was nothing to show whether this was in the engine or its installation. This was not the primary cause of the accident but may have been contributory.

CONDITIONS AT CROYDON. THE GOVERNMENT CRITICISED. LONDON. Feb. 2. The Air Ministry's inquiry into tho Purley crash on Christmas Eve as a. result of which eight persons were killed, was continued to-day. Lord Brackley, Superintendent of Airways, gave evidence that he repeatedly reported that tho Croydon aerodrome was unsafe under certain weather conditions, because the slope forced the machines to take off at the side of the wind instead of into the wind. The weather ou Christmas Eve, he said, was gusty, but not unsuitable. Colonel Edwards, Deputy-Director of Air Transport, said that the Air Ministry had decided upon big improvements at Croydon, but these had been ndd up pending legislation. Counsel for the relatives of one of the passengers who was killed, strongly criticised the Government's delay in carrying out the improvements. It needed a disaster, ho declared, to produce Government action. The Imperial Airways Company, he added, was recklessly and heedlessly negligent when it sent off a loaded aeroplane with a defective petrol-pipe from a bad take-off in gusty weather.