A draft report into an airplane crash which claimed the lives of six people at Cork Airport in 2011 is currently being finalised and will be sent to a number of interested parties for comments when it is completed, the Air Accident Investigation Unit confirmed yesterday.
In its second interim statement on the Manx2.com flight which crashed at Cork Airport on February 10th 2011, the AAIU said the draft report will be issued to interested parties who will then have 60 days to respond or comment on its findings.
The AAIU will then consider such comments before the final report is made public into the fatal incident in which the 19-year-old Fairchild Metro III crashed as it attempted to land in heavy fog at Cork Airport.
Tickets for the flight between Belfast and Cork were sold by Manx2.com but given that the service was operated by Flightline BCN of Barcelona and the airplane was owned by Air Lada of Seville, much of the relevant documentation was in Spanish.
According to the AAIU second interim statement, much of the operational, engineering and oversight documentation existed only in Spanish and it has taken the investigation team considerable time to accurately translate such documents which are highly technical.
"The sole purpose of this investigation is the prevention of aviation accidents and incidents; it is not the purpose of the investigation to apportion blame or liability," said the AAIU in the statement which is designed to update the investigation approaching the second anniversary.
The investigation process involved reviewing of initial findings and the interviewing of additional personnel as the investigation progressed in addition to sourcing and cross-referencing documentation in several jurisdictions, said the AAIU.
"The investigation has examined the available operational and technical evidence to identify the immediate causal and contributory factors involved in this accident," said the AAIU, adding that the second statement should be read in conjunction with previous statements.
In February 2012, a first interim statement issued by the AAIU found evidence of some mechanical problems with the American manufactured plane but made no assessment as to whether these problems contributed to the crash.
That first interim statement confirmed that while many of the components of the Metro III had no pre-crash defects, some problems have been identified with a number of components following a more detailed examination by the AAIU team.
Crew members, Spanish pilot, Jordi Sola Lopez (31) from Manresa in Spain and co-pilot, Andrew Cantle (27) from Sunderland, were killed along with four of their 10 passengers in the crash.
The passengers killed were businessman Richard Noble (48) from Belfast; accountant Patrick Cullinan (45) originally from Co Tyrone but living in Belfast; businessman Brendan McAleese (39) from Co Antrim and harbour master, Michael Evans (51) from Belfast.
