Report on tragedy expected within month

AN INITIAL report into the cause of yesterday’s crash at Cork Airport, in which six people were killed, is expected within a month.

The Air Accident Investigation Unit at the Department of Transport said a draft report of “one or two pages” could be concluded relatively quickly while the full report could be up to two years in preparation.

Jurgen Whyte of the air accident unit said the report would be a simple identification of “basic facts”.

Two teams of investigators were dispatched within hours of the crash, the first travelling by helicopter from the military airfield at Baldonnel in Co Dublin. A second team travelling by road with specialist equipment were due in Cork in the afternoon. Both teams included an engineer and a pilot.

Mr Whyte said the investigators would be looking for separate data and voice recorders among the wreckage of the aircraft. He said the voice and data recorders were built to withstand aircraft fires which were known to reach 1,000 degrees.

Information supplied by the voice and data recorders would provide details of cloud cover and visibility as well as mechanical data which would indicate if there was a problem with the aircraft.

Considerable attention will be paid to visibility at the time as witnesses said there was dense fog surrounding the runway. Pilot error and the advice from air traffic control will also be considered, particularly due to the number of attempts at landing.

A number of witnesses who were reported to have seen the crash happen will also be interviewed.

Minister for Transport Pat Carey said air traffic personnel from the UK and from Spain would be entitled to be involved as the aircraft had flown from and was operated through UK and was registered in Spain.

Assistance has also been offered by the UK government’s air accident investigation unit.

A separate investigation is under way by the Garda.

While there is no reason to suspect there was anything wrong with the aircraft at this stage, the aircraft type, a Fairchild Metroliner, has been involved in a number of crashes since it was first developed in the 1970s.

According to aviation consultants Ascend, this is the third crash of a Fairchild Metroliner in five years. Since 1975 some 138 passengers and 70 crew have been killed in the aircraft.

The crash was the third time Cork has been involved in fatal air crashes. In March 1968 an Aer Lingus Vickers Viscount took off from Cork bound for London. The aircraft, the St Phelim, later plunged into the sea off the Tuskar Rock lighthouse killing all 57 passengers and four crew on board. In June 1985, an Air India 747 en route from Canada to New Delhi blew up over the Atlantic as a result of a bomb by Sikh extremists. A total of 329 people died in that incident with bodies being brought ashore in Cork.

Mr Whyte refused to speculate as to the cause of the crash yesterday, also refusing to confirm Irish Aviation Authority disclosures that the aircraft had attempted to land three times.