Air Corps chief pays tribute to crash pilots

THE head of the Irish Air Corps last night paid tribute to two pilots killed on a training mission.

Captain Derek Furniss, an experienced instructor, and Cadet David Jevens died when their two-seater light aircraft crashed in a remote mountain valley in Connemara. The pair had been on a cross country low-flying exercise with two other planes from Casement Aerodrome near Dublin, to Galway and back.

It emerged yesterday from eyewitness reports the plane came within five feet of clearing the mountain and might have been able to land in flat bog had it managed to get over the top.