Accident Details
A special charter flight departed London Airport at 1516 hours GMT en route to Belfast. The aircraft carried five crew members and two company employees, totaling seven occupants.
Approach and Crash
At 1645 hours, the aircraft was taken over by the Precision Approach Controller for a Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) talkdown to runway 28 (276°). The captain believed weather conditions would allow him to become visual at or above the critical height of 500 feet.
During the approach, soon after the controller reported '3/4 of a mile from touchdown,' the aircraft was observed to the right of the centerline. Shortly afterward, it was 'well right of centerline.' Just after the controller announced '1/2 a mile from touchdown,' he transmitted: 'if you're overshooting turn left left 5° on overshoot over.' The aircraft replied with '...overshooting.'
Around this time, several witnesses heard the aircraft's engines 'rev up.' At 1651 hours, the aircraft crashed within the airport boundary, approximately 1,000 feet south of the western end of runway 28. All seven occupants were killed.
Investigation
An extensive examination of the wreckage was conducted. The autopilot equipment was analyzed and found to be in proper working order; it was not energized, and its clutches were not engaged at impact. Experts studied the flight path during the final descent, particularly considering the possibility of a bunt maneuver or partial stall recovery. They concluded that conditions at impact could be reproduced without structural failure or unserviceability, but the required maneuver would have been fairly violent.
Investigators theorized that the pilot might have been deceived into performing such a violent maneuver, possibly due to misleading information from the Flight System and associated instruments. However, all recovered instruments and indicators were exhaustively examined by a team of experts, and no evidence of malfunction was found that could have led the pilot to make a disastrous control input.
Probable Cause
The official investigation determined that the cause of the accident was not determined.