Chinook pilots were negligent, says minister

The only realistic explanation for the RAF Chinook helicopter disaster on the Mull of Kintyre in June 1994, in which 29 people died, was the finding of pilots’ negligence reached by the reviewing officers of the RAF Board of Inquiry, the House of Lords was told today.

Junior Defence Minister Lord Bach told a crowded and hushed House: ‘‘We have agonised over whether there was some way that we could exonerate the pilots posthumously. But on the basis of all the evidence, I am unable to do so.’’