Flight procedures led to air accident
Six people who were able to climb from the stricken US-registered plane escaped injury when the wing tip clipped the tarmac while landing in a crosswind.
The plane, which had set off from Swansea in Wales for Weston in Co Dublin on the morning of May 26 last year, carried four passengers as well as the two flight crew.
During the landing the aircraft veered to the right on the runway, the left wing tip contacted the surface and part of the undercarriage collapsed. The left main wheel broke from the plane and rolled away.
A formal investigation, conducted by the Air Accident Investigation Unit of the Department of Transport, said the landing technique was unsuitable for maintaining directional control of the aircraft on the runway given the crosswind conditions at the time.
A contributory cause of the accident was the non-compliance with verbal crosswind instructions, while undercarriage shock struts were found to be over inflated. The aircraft was well maintained but two defects to the left shock strut should have been rectified.
In a second accident involving a light aircraft on May 15, 2000, the investigators blamed carburetor icing as a probable cause of engine power reduction as the plane was about to take-off at Coonagh Airfield in Co Limerick.
Both pilots had reported “a sudden and inexplicable loss of power” and the take-off was abandoned. The two crew members escaped injury.
The aircraft, operated by a local flying club at Coonagh, was a write-off after it overshot the end of the runway, pushed through a light wire fence, hit a stone wall, and came to rest on a minor public road.
