A PRELIMINARY inquiry into the Air Corps crash that claimed the lives of two pilots in Connemara last month has found no technical defects with the aircraft.
Witnesses in the area at the time reported "rapidly changing cloud height and visibility at that time", according to the Air Accident Investigation Unit's (AAIU) preliminary report, which found that the crash was "characteristic of high-speed impact".
Capt Derek Furniss (32) and Cadet David Jevens (22) are believed to have died instantly when their Pilatus PC-9 training aircraft crashed into a hillside at Crimlin East, near Cornamona on the Galway-Mayo border on October 12th. The AAIU team, led by Paddy
Judge and involving three Air Corps investigators, says it is still examining data from the memory unit in the aircraft's combined cockpit voice and flight data recorder.
However, preliminary analysis of the information "indicates that the crew were attempting to navigate to their next planned reporting point at Maam", the report published yesterday says.
Ejection seats had not been activated before the crash, it says, and the plane went down less than a nautical mile north of the intended navigational course.
The report confirms that the aircraft was conducting a visual flight rules navigational cross-country training exercise from Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel, west Dublin, via Carrigallen, Co Cavan, and Maam, west Galway, and was due to return via Galway airport.
The aircraft was one of three PC-9Ms on the same exercise, taking off at 15-minute intervals from Baldonnel. The aircraft confirmed with Shannon air traffic control at 5.39pm local time (4.39pm universal co-ordinated time as quoted in the AAIU report) that it was flying over Carrigallen at a height of 1,500ft and was setting course for its final waypoint at Maam, before refuelling at Galway airport.
It was last recorded at 5.55pm local time by Shannon radar. At that stage, it was flying over lower Lough Mask at an altitude of 1,300ft and on course for Maam.
The AAIU was contacted by the fire station officer in Castlebar, Co Mayo, at 6.10pm local time that a resident had reported hearing an aircraft crash in Crimlin valley.
The aircraft was found by two local farmers, Seán Ó Cionnaith and Joe Walsh, at Crimlin East, one of two headlands between a saddle close to the 494m Lugnabrick mountain.
The AAIU says the specific area, known as Maum Dearg, is less than one nautical mile north of the intended navigational track.
"The valley is enclosed on three sides by high ground (circa 1,500ft), has an east/west orientation and is open to the east," the report says.
"At the time of impact, the aircraft was travelling in a northwesterly direction. It was destroyed on impact on the crest of the second and lowest of a series of three ridges.
The debris trail was distributed along a 300ft down slope and was characteristic of a high-speed impact."
Mr Ó Cionnaith, a first responder-trained volunteer with the Corrib-Mask/Irish Red Cross rescue team, located the pilots, who had not survived, and contacted the emergency services.Access to the wreckage was restricted until explosive devices fitted to the aircraft's ejector seats had been made safe at first light the following morning.
"Witnesses in the valley . . . reported seeing the aircraft travelling east down the valley, making a steep turn to the north and then climbing. They also reported rapidly changing cloud height and visibility at that time," the report says.
"Preliminary analysis indicates that the crew were attempting to navigate to their next planned reporting point at Maam."
Capt Furniss, from Ballinteer, Dublin, was a chief flight instructor with the Pilatus, a member of the Air Corps PC-9 display team, an athlete and member of Scouting Ireland.
Cadet Jevens, from Glynn, Co Wexford, was at an advanced stage of flight training.
The AAIU, under the aegis of the Department of Transport, conducts inquiries to prevent further aircraft or aviation accidents and does not apportion blame.
