BMPA History

2000 Spring Meeting, March 10, Farnborough

A total of 36 people attended this one day meeting with 29 touring the AAIB and 28 attending the Friday evening dinner.

Our Spring meeting started at the Farnborough Post House Hotel. Some will remember this as the Crest Hotl, some, even older, as The Queens. I believe the latter refers possessively to a monarch, not to the orientation of the guests, although it has no apostrophe.

We convened for a sumptuous lunch on Friday before driving to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (of the Department of the Environment, Transport and Regions) new dedicated entrance gate. There we were welcomed by Mr Ken Smart CBE, the Chief Inspector of Accidents, who gave us an hour long briefing. He traced the origins of the organization, always independent and reporting direct to government, from Royal Flying Corps to Royal Air Force, incorporation post-war civilian flying, on through the second world war (more deaths in accidents than due to enemy action) until it was absorbed into the Ministry of Civil Aviation. It now reports direct to the Minister for the Environment, Transport and Regions (John Prescott at the time of writing), investigates about 400 UK incidents a year as well as assisting many foreign governments and provides a 24 hour service. All its publications, including reports, are available on theAAIB website. The service is provided by a team of 31 inspectors who are either pilots (about a third) or engineers (the other two thirds). The pilots are all current and the between them cover anything that flies. There is a tentative movement towards harmonizing accident investigation practice across all transport modalities (air, sea and rail).

Following our briefing we walked the short distance to the hangars for a tour of recent and current investigations. The details are, or will be, published as reports available on the website. The messages were not original. What goes up must come down, the manner of the descent being all important. The fundamental rules for flight continue to hold sway. Common things occur commonly. If anything can go wrong, sooner or later it will (this is not Murphy's Law, which concerns components being fitted wrongly). Included in this tour was an introduction to flight recorders of all vintages and the astonishing amount of information that can be found on a piece of stainless stell wire, electro magnetic tape or these days a ubiquitous 'chip'. For me the two most striking aspects of the visit were the pains taken to arrive at the cause(s) of the crash, not merely a cause, and the poignancy of the personal effects neatly collected together - necktie torn off just below the knot, glasses twisted but intact, a book covered in mud and similar artefacts, which brought home that these wrecks had contained fellow pilots who had not had our luck.

In somewhat sombre mood we returned to The Queens for preprandial drinks and conversation before a dinner which matched the lunch in scale and excellence. Some members then used the proximity of London to go home or to friends. The rest of us slept off our dinners before leaving the following morning.

Andrew Clymo