A review of the findings of the first public inquiry into an Aer Lingus crash in 1953 will be conducted in public hearings in Dublin on Monday.
The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, has appointed Mr Patrick Keane SC to carry out the investigation with the assistance of two assessors. They will examine whether there is any new evidence that was not available to the original court inquiry which might have led it to reach a different conclusion.
The daughters of the late Capt T.J. Hanley, who died aged 85 in 1992, have claimed for years that relevant evidence had been withheld from the original inquiry and that the wrong verdict had been reached.
Capt Hanley was the pilot of an Aer Lingus DC3, St Kieran, which force-landed in a field at Spernall Ash, near Birmingham, on January 1st, 1953. His Dakota aircraft was on a scheduled flight from Dublin to Birmingham when the accident happened. The aircraft was a total loss.
The co-pilot, Capt Paddy Whyte, who is still alive, sustained head and back injuries, but none of the 22 passengers was seriously injured.
In a subsequent public inquiry chaired by the late Mr Justice Thomas Teevan, the main finding 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 and did ground work at Honolulu Airport for almost 20 years.
He told The Irish Times in 1974 that he believed relevant evidence had been withheld from the public inquiry. He had based his defence, he said, on the possibility of water contamination of the fuel and alleged that this was not properly investigated.
The public hearings to review the case will take place in the Department of Public Enterprise. The terms of reference of the review raise the question as to whether it was reasonable for the 1953 inquiry to conclude as a matter of probability that fuel mismanagement had been the cause of the crash.
