The Events

The aircraft departed Palma de Mallorca, carrying 1 passenger, a little known actress and two flight crew.  As Northolt has no Instrument Landing System, a Precision Approach (talkdown) was given to the aircraft.  As Northolt is a Military base, standard NATO phraseology is used rather than the civil ICAO version.

At three miles, the aircraft was asked to confirm that his landing gear was down.  The co-pilot, who was operating the radio while the pilot was doing the flying was not a good English speaker and did not understand the request, which was repeated several times.

The pilot, who did understand, had to take over communications and while doing so lost concentration of the flying, becoming high on the glide slope and fast.  He also failed to deploy the spoilers, which would have slowed the aircraft safely after landing.

The aircraft landed almost 2000ft down the runway and towards the end of the landing roll swerved left then right, overran the runway at a speed of 70 knots, collided with 3 lighting units and continued through the airfield boundary chain link fence.

The A40 main trunk road is adjacent to the airfield at this point albeit at a lower level and the aircraft ran on to the road and was immediately in collision with a moving Ford Transit van.  The aircraft came to rest in the left hand lane of the road with the van imbedded in the right side of the fuselage (see photo).

Coincidentally the London Air Ambulance was holding south of the airfield waiting to cross and was immediately on the scene as was the Northolt Fire Service who sprayed foam to prevent the leaking fuel igniting. The crew suffered concussion and bruising, the passenger uninjured and the van driver was treated for cuts and shock and became a media celebrity, especially when he was later fired by his employer for having too much time off work!

The nose and body of the aircraft were later severed completely to facilitate removal of the wreck to the AAIB at Farnborough, after the fuel tanks had been pumped out.

The following helicopters were present in connection with the incident:
 
G-HEMS AS365 Dauphin Medevac, on scene at the time
XZ588  Sea King HAR3 Scrambled from RAF Wattisham
G-SEPC AS355N Twin Squirrel Police, brought AAIB investigators
G-OITN AS355F Twin Squirrel Independent Television News, also helped film runway marks for AAIB
XW232 Puma HC1 c/s '3KO25', brought salvage engineers
G-SEPB AS355N Twin Squirrel Police, circled the area
 The airfield re-opened around 17.00 local time and the A40 road re-opened around 15.00.

Findings and Recommendations

1) Northolt

Northolt ATC used standard NATO phraseology throughout and were quick to alert the emergency services after the accident.  The Northolt Fire Service was also praised for it's quick and effective reaction.  The report suggests that because the bulk of traffic at Northolt is civil, quoted as 42% against RAF movements of 34% standard ICAO radio phraseology should be adopted.

The lack of navigation facilities is criticised in comparison to other London area airfields and the report recommends that 'further' consideration should be given to the installation of an ILS system, due to the proximity of the surrounding built up areas.  This had been considered by the RAF some ten years previously although it had been decided against due to lack of space and interference problems from surrounding terrain and buildings.

The proximity of the trunk road to the runway end was concluded to have contributed to the severity of the accident.  Mention is made of an overrun of a Citation at Southampton some years previously where it was concluded that an arrester bed at the end of the runway would have helped stop the aircraft and this was again concluded in this instance.  As one of the report's safety recommendations, Northolt is now to have arrester beds installed at each end of the runway.

2) Crew

The report concluded that the first officer's lack of understanding the communications led to the Pilot being distracted from flying the approach, which led to the aircraft flying faster and landing further down the runway than desirable and also the lack of deployment of the spoilers.  The co-pilot had been reading the taxi chart on approach, so did not notice the lack of spoilers.

There was no cockpit Voice Recorder in the aircraft as it is not required by Spanish rules.  The report recommends that 'Cockpit Resource Management' training should be required by the Spanish authorities, ie the Pilots should be trained to interact better with each other in the cockpit, as obviously did not happen in this case.

3) Passenger

The passenger had reported that the pilots had been seen to argue and fight over the centre console during the approach.  The report concludes that as both pilots hands would normally be on the console during this phase of flight and as the passenger did not understand Spanish there was no substance to this allegation, which both pilots had denied.

My Comments

It is good to see that the Northolt staff were praised for their prompt reactions.  The report places the blame in the hands of the Pilot and Co-pilot for several mistakes which exacerbated the situation.

As usual the local  and national papers have interpreted this report as they think best, preferring to concentrate on the 'argument' theory from the blonde actress passenger.  I have tried to precis the report in an unbiased manor without being sensationalist and it has been interesting to compare this with the newspaper versions.

Exactly how many of the safety recommendations will be adopted remains to be seen, although the arrester beds are already being installed.  The RAF's reaction to the phraseology problem is that operators are aware that they are flying to a military airfield and should be prepared for non ICAO R/T, which is fair comment.

As for the ILS, with little space available for the arrays at the runway ends and the big problem of finding space in densely populated areas of West London for beacons it will probably be a long time before this matter is resolved - maybe until MLS or GPS approaches are available...

Update, October 2000

.With reference to the above comments, in addition to the 'arrestor beds' at the end of each runway that have now been installed,  an ILS being is also now in service on runway 25, although approaches to 07 still require a GCA/PAR.
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The report was prepared by R StJ Whidborne, Inspector of Air Accidents
Credit for the information and extracts from the report goes to the AAIB.

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