Classic British Flight Sim

There was a nice item on Wales Today tonight about the 60th anniversary of the Llandow air crash where a private chartered Avro Tudor V G-AKBY returning rugby fans from an international in Dublin stalled and crashed at Llandow just within sight of the destination airfield. At the time it was the worst air disaster ever with 80 dead, and only 3 survivors. The piece on Wales Today had an interview with one of the three survivors.

Given the fact we have another Wales versus Ireland international this weekend in Dublin it seems especially poignant that 60 years on there is only a recorded probable cause to the disaster (overloading and poor load management causing low speed instability) and the definitive reason was never established.

http://www.southwalespolicemuseum.org.u ... _Disa.aspx

I remember reading about that some time ago and of the result of the investigation. The lack of fire after the crash was reported as down to the pilots switching off the magnetos and fuel just before impact. None-the-less a terrible tragedy.

Nigel.

Horrible. May they all rest in peace.

Brian

I was not familiar with this incident, but what a tragedy with the realtives watching.

Close call on the villiage too

I was just re-reading the account of this accident, in Vol 4 of Macarthur Job's "Air Disaster" series. Despite the sensationalist title, these books are well researched and very informative.
The cause of the accident was established. RAE Farnborough provided evidence to the inquiry that the CofG was somewhere between 7 and 13 inches aft of the rearward limit, when the plane departed Collinstown.
Further to that, they showed that in that situation, with the plane in landing configuration, there would be insufficient down elevator authority to counter the effect of the rearward CofG shift caused by sudden acceleration.
Making a slow, shallow glide, approach to Llandow, because of the short runway length, the pilot realised he was undershooting and applied power. This produced an uncontrolled climb to an angle of about 70 degrees, and at about 350' AGL, the aircraft stalled and the right wing dropped. At that height it was impossible to recover control in time to avoid impact. The crew had barely four seconds to respond. That they even managed to switch the mags off is commendable.
AVM Bennett's comments were to say the least unfortunate.
I think it is disgraceful that the successful prosecution of the company by the Min of Civil Aviation resulted in a paltry fine of only fifty quid.
MikeW

Garry Russell wrote:I was not familiar with this incident, but what a tragedy with the realtives watching.

Close call on the villiage too

At the time it was,to use a hackneyed phrase, 'the world's worst air disaster'

ttfn

Pete

Yeah...but being 8 years before I was born it had faded by the time I was aware of anything

One point regarding the report is the explanation of why the CofG was outside the limits.

For the flight to and from Dublin there had been an alteration to the seating arrangements to allow an extra six passengers than the maximum permissible, this required the ammending of the a/c certificate of airworthiness but the loading was not in compliance with the provisions of this ammendment.

The court of enquiry recommended that whenever an a/c seating arrangement be changed then a new daily certificate and technical log be prepared and that it should also be the duty of the maintenance engineer responsible for the alterations to record in these documents for reference by the pilot.

Regards
Nigel.

The behaviour sounds very similay to the Channel Express Freindship that crashed on the approach to Guernsey with a too far rearward CofG

Nigel H-J wrote:The court of enquiry recommended that whenever an a/c seating arrangement be changed then a new daily certificate and technical log be prepared and that it should also be the duty of the maintenance engineer responsible for the alterations to record in these documents for reference by the pilot.

Regards
Nigel.

Indeed it now is Nigel, in a previous job I had to re-configure aircraft cabins on a nightly basis, certifying the change in the aircraft tech log,and referring crew as to which weight and balance state was in force (we had several depending on fit: 52 or 44 or 36 seat passenger,freight,or combi)

ttfn

Pete