Крушение рейса Aer Lingus 712 у скалы Таскар-Рок

Flight which crashed en route from Cork to London on 24 March 1968

Aer Lingus Flight 712 crashed en route from Cork to London on 24 March 1968, killing all 61 passengers and crew. The aircraft, a Vickers Viscount 803 named St. Phelim, crashed into the sea off Tuskar Rock, County Wexford. Although the investigation into the crash lasted two years, a cause was never determined. Causes proposed in several investigative reports include possible impact with birds, a missile or target drone, or mechanical and structural failures. Aer Lingus still uses this flight number for a daily flight from Cork to London Heathrow, contrary to airline convention of discontinuing a flight number following a crash. The route is operated with an aircraft from the Airbus A320 family.

The aircraft was a Vickers Viscount 803 which flew under tail number EI AOM and had been in service since 1957 with a total of 18,806 lifetime flight hours. Aer Lingus operated approximately 20 Viscount aircraft in the 1950s and 1960s, of which two others were involved in serious incidents. The year before the Tuskar Rock crash, in June 1967, an 803 Viscount on a training flight crashed (due to a stall) with the loss of 3 crew lives. Also in 1967, in September, an 808 Viscount was damaged beyond repair during a crash landing (due to pilot error in fog) that caused no serious casualties.

The crew of EI AOM Flight 712 included Captain Bernard O'Beirne, 35, who had joined Aer Lingus after three years in the Air Corps. His total flying time was 6,683 hours, 1,679 of them on Viscounts. He was endorsed for command on Viscount aircraft and passed a medical in January 1968. The first officer was Paul Heffernan, 22, who had training with Airwork Services Training at Perth and joined Aer Lingus in 1966. That year, he received an Irish Commercial Pilots licence with Viscount endorsement and instrument rating. His total flying time was 1,139 hours, of which 900 was on Viscounts.

An investigation report was produced in 1970. A review was undertaken between 1998 and 2000. An independent study was commissioned in 2000. However, in 2002 a review process conducted by the Air Accident Investigation Unit disclosed that Aer Lingus paperwork relating to a routine maintenance inspection carried out on the aircraft in December 1967 was found to be missing in 1968. Moreover, a large body of research was done by the investigators after the accident, regarding the maintenance operating plan used for EI AOM and defects on the aircraft found during analysis of the maintenance records. This research was not referred to in the 1970 report. A new board of investigation was set up by the Irish Government and found that the crash was likely the consequence of a chain of events starting with a failure to the left tail plane caused by metal fatigue, corrosion, flutter or a bird strike, with the most likely cause being a flutter induced fatigue failure of the elevator trim tab operating mechanism. In March 2007, retired Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Eric Evers made an unsupported claim that the accident was caused by a mid air collision between the Aer Lingus Vickers Viscount and a French built military aircraft which was training with the Irish Air Corps. Evers maintained that he had evidence that a Fouga Magister trainer accidentally collided with the Aer Lingus aircraft as it was checking the status of the Viscount's undercarriage, which he claimed had failed to lock in position correctly. According to Evers, the Magister's two pilots survived by ejecting and parachuting to safety; however Magisters do not have ejector seats. Evers' claims, including that French and Irish authorities colluded in a cover up, have been strongly refuted by other commentators. For example, Mike Reynolds, an aviator and author of Tragedy at Tuskar Rock, disputed Evers' claims and supports the findings of the 2002 French/Australian investigation – which ruled out an impact with another aircraft or missile.