Report on crash-landing of Aer Lingus plane due

THE findings of an inquiry into the crash-landing of an Aer Lingus passenger plane and the controversial sacking of its pilot are to be published in the coming days.

The inquiry into the events of half a century ago was held in public over a number of days in March last year, at the request of the family of the late Captain TJ Hanley. They have fought for decades to clear him of blame for the accident.

The report was completed several months after the public hearings but the Department of Transport agreed to a family request not to release it prior to today’s date to allow them time to assess the findings.

Capt Hanley defied the odds to bring his crippled Dakota aircraft, the St Kieran, to land in a farmer’s field at Spernall Ash near Birmingham without serious injury to any of the 25 passengers and crew after the plane’s engines failed on a flight from Dublin on New Year’s Day 1953.

But in the investigation that followed, pilot error was blamed and Capt Hanley was stripped of his licence and forced to emigrate.

The investigation concluded the St Kieran’s engines suffered fuel starvation after Capt Hanley switched over both the left and right engine to feed off the one starboard fuel tank.

Capt Hanley vigorously disputed this claim and argued that water in the tanks caused by unsatisfactory refuelling methods had blocked the fuel supply to the engines.

At the time, Capt Hanley was president of the Irish Airline Pilots Association, and was in dispute with Aer Lingus and the then Department of Industry and Commerce over his highlighting of safety deficiencies.

Last year’s fresh hearing heard there was no evidence that the left engine was switched to the right tank and that, even if it had been inadvertently switched, there was enough fuel in the right tank to power both engines until the plane reached Birmingham.

The new hearing, chaired by Senior Counsel Patrick Keane and two aeronautical experts, was also told of a 1953 British police report which was excluded from the original inquiry but which concluded water in the fuel tanks was to blame. The original inquiry had also failed to hear key evidence of witnesses on the ground who watched the plane descend.

Capt Hanley died in 1992 at the age of 85 but his three daughters and his son kept up the campaign to clear his name. Their repeated demands for a fresh inquiry were eventually met by then public enterprise minister Mary O’Rourke.