Final words from crash jet: ‘We’ve got major problem’

The twin-engined Cessna Citation 500 was given permission by air traffic control to ascend to 2,400ft after it took off from Biggin Hill airport in Kent, heading to Pau in south-west France.

But about a minute after take off, pilot Michael Roberts asked to make an immediate return after reporting engine vibration, the inquest at Bromley Civic Centre heard.

Mr Roberts, from Effingham, Surrey, then told air traffic control: “We have a major problem, a major problem.

“It looks as though we’re going in, we’re going in.”

Witnesses reported seeing the aircraft flying low above a residential area and a playing area. It then hit a house in Farnborough, Kent, causing a fire that destroyed the building.

All five people on board the Cessna were killed, including Mr Roberts, 63, co-pilot Michael Chapman, 57, and passengers David Leslie, 54, Richard Lloyd, 63, and Christopher Allarton, 25.

Coroner Roy Palmer said it was “extremely fortuitous” that no one was in the house at the time and it was through “great good fortune” that no one was killed on the ground.

The chief inspector of the Air Accidents Investigations Branch (AAIB), Keith Conradi, said the Cessna was not required by law to have a black box flight recorder but among the recommendations made by the AAIB in the wake of the tragedy was for aircraft of this type to be fitted with them.

Det Chief Insp Jane Corrigan, of the Metropolitan Police, said: “We spoke to a number of people including one who said she saw the plane flying low with its left wing at an angle and then it nosedived into the ground and exploded.

Another witness heard a very loud jet engine as if it was trying to change gear and then saw the plane flying low and the engine struggling.”

The house owner, Edwin Harman, was away on holiday while his wife, Pat, had returned from the break before her husband and was heading home at the time of the tragedy.

The inquest heard that it was most likely that a mechanical failure within the air cycle machine – part of the air conditioning and pressurising system – caused the engine vibration.

There was no evidence of pre-existing defects with the aircraft and it had undergone an inspection in the January before the crash.