PropertyValue
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  • 1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash
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  • The 1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash occurred on 2 June 1994 at about 18:00 hours when a Royal Air Force (RAF) Chinook helicopter (serial number ZD576, callsign F4J40) crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, killing all twenty-five passengers and four crew on board. Among the passengers were almost all the United Kingdom's senior Northern Ireland intelligence experts. It was the RAF's worst peacetime disaster.
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Site
  • Mull of Kintyre, Scotland
Tail Number
  • ZD576
Date
  • 1994-06-02
Origin
Type
Align
  • right
Caption
  • The memorial on the Mull of Kintyre to the victims of the crash.
Width
  • 30.0
Outcome
  • CFIT
Cause
  • Ground impact, cause undetermined
Fatalities
  • 29
Operator
occurrence type
  • Accident
Passengers
  • 25
Destination
  • Inverness, Scotland
Source
  • Karl Schneider, Editor of Computer Weekly, 2002
  • Baroness Symons, speaking on behalf of the Government in the House of Lords in 2000.
Quote
  • "The chances are that if software caused any of these accidents, we would never know. This is because when software fails, or it contains coding or design flaws... only the manufacturer will understand its system well enough to identify any flaws... Step forward the vulnerable equipment operators: the pilots... who cannot prove their innocence. That is why the loss of Chinook ZD576 is so much more than a helicopter crash. To accept the verdict against the pilots is to accept that it is reasonable to blame the operators if the cause of a disaster is not known."
  • "There is no evidence of any significant change of course and none of the decision, if any, that the crew made. When the crew released the computer from its fix on the Mull, the pilots knew how close to the Mull they were and, given the deteriorating weather and the strict visibility requirements under visual flight rules they should by that time already have chosen an alternative course. As they had not done so, they could, and, under the rules, should have either turned away from the Mull immediately or slowed down and climbed to a safe altitude."
Crew
  • 4
Aircraft Type
abstract
  • The 1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash occurred on 2 June 1994 at about 18:00 hours when a Royal Air Force (RAF) Chinook helicopter (serial number ZD576, callsign F4J40) crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, killing all twenty-five passengers and four crew on board. Among the passengers were almost all the United Kingdom's senior Northern Ireland intelligence experts. It was the RAF's worst peacetime disaster. An RAF board of inquiry in 1995 ruled that the cause of the accident to be pilot error; this finding proved to be controversial, especially in light of irregularities and technical issues surrounding the then-new Chinook HC.2 variant were uncovered. A Parliamentary inquiry conducted in 2001 found that the previous verdict of gross negligence on the part of the crew to be 'unjustified'. In 2011, an independent review of the crash cleared the crew of negligence.