Hansard

Military Aircraft: Helicopters

Volume 470: debated on Monday 7 January 2008

Download text
Back to top Previous debate Next debate

Mr. Keetch

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many accidents have taken place involving (a) Puma, (b) Merlin, (c) Chinook and (d) Sea King RAF helicopters since 2001; how many British service personnel were killed or wounded as a result in each case; and whether (i) equipment failure and (ii) pilot error were contributory factors in each case. (171010)

Mr. Bob Ainsworth

Accidents involving the requested types of helicopter, in which the aircraft suffered category 4 (major damage, repairable off-site) and category 5 (write-off) since 2001 are given in the following table:

Date

Aircraft

Location

Injured

Killed

9 April 2001

Puma XW200

Kosovo

1

2

16 August 2001

Sea King XZ599

RAF St. Mawgan

2

—

21 January 2002

Puma XW214

Ballykelly, NI

1

—

16 March 2002

Puma2XW227

Jonesborough, NI

13

—

19 July 2004

Puma XW221

Basra, Iraq

2

1

10 April 2006

Chinookl ZA654

Afghanistan

—

—

1 April 2007

(Puma1 XW211

Iraq

—

—

1 April 2007

Puma1XW218

Iraq

—

2

8 August 2007

Puma2 ZA934

Catterick, N. Yorkshire

9

3

20 November 2007

Puma2 ZA938

Iraq

2

2

1 These accidents are still under investigation.

2 In addition, there was one civilian passenger injured in this incident.

There have been no accidents involving Merlin helicopters since 2001.

Where the cause has been determined, none of the accidents has been attributed to major equipment failure.