New inquiry ordered into 1953 air accident

The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, has decided on a new investigation into the findings of the first public inquiry into an Aer Lingus crash in 1953.

She has offered the family of the late Capt T.J. Hanley, the pilot of an Aer Lingus DC3, St Kieran, which force-landed in a field at Spernall Ash, near Birmingham, the appointment of a retired judge or a barrister of 10 years' standing to review the case. The terms of reference of the new inquiry will be discussed at a meeting in the Department next month.

Capt Hanley was on a flight from Dublin to Birmingham on January 1st, 1953, when the accident occurred. The aircraft was destroyed, but none of the 22 passengers was seriously injured.

The main conclusion of the subsequent public inquiry, chaired by the late Mr Justice Thomas Teevan, was that the primary cause of the accident was loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. This was caused by selecting the port engine to the right main tank, to which the starboard engine was also selected.

Capt Hanley's licence for passenger-carrying aircraft was endorsed for life. He was forced to emigrate. On his retirement, he and his family began campaigning to have the case reopened. He told The Irish Times in 1974 that relevant evidence had been withheld from the court and that his defence of water contamination of the fuel had not been properly investigated.

The Irish Airline Pilots' Association, under its then president, Capt P.V. Donoghue, made submissions to the government in the mid-1970s supporting his contention that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.

The pilots held that the water-in-fuel theory, "then a serious hazard at Dublin Airport", was not properly investigated; that the most important evidence to support this theory (a Liverpool police report, dated March 5th, 1953, which the court said did not exist) was "apparently deliberately withheld"; that vital evidence from witnesses at the scene, who were not called before the court, refuted the verdict of fuel mismanagement; and that references to water in the fuel were deleted from the verbatim report of the inquiry. Following these representations, Capt Hanley's licence was restored "unconditionally" on August 3rd, 1977. He died, aged 85, in 1992. The Hanley daughters applied to Ms O'Rourke last year for an independent review of the case. They claimed that many of the personnel investigating their father's case were also involved in the 1970 Tuskar Rock disaster inquiry.