FOUR men were killed when their light aircraft crashed into the Paps
of Jura mountain range.
Wreckage of the single-engine TB20 aircraft, which left Blackpool on
Saturday morning, was discovered last night. The bodies were found by a
team from Jura coastguard. No-one realised the aircraft was missing
until a hotelier telephoned the home of one of the passengers.
A spokesman for the Rescue Co-ordination Centre at RAF Pitreavie said:
''Wreckage was scattered over a wide area on the top of Glas Bheinn. It
looks as if the plane flew right over the centre of Jura en route for
Mull and smacked into the top of the hill.''
There were high winds and torrential rain at the time.
One of the men is believed to be Mr Ian Shaw, a fishmonger, from
Waddington, Clitheroe, who was travelling to Mull with three friends for
a holiday. He was in his early 50s, married, and had two children.
The pilot and owner of the aircraft is believed to be Mr R. C. Watts,
of Knowle Green, in Preston. The names of the other two passengers, both
believed to be from Clitheroe, have not been released.
The search was not launched until 30 hours after the aircraft went
missing. The alert was raised after a Mull hotelier telephoned the home
of one of the passengers to ask whether he should keep the room vacant.
Mr Paul Price, owner of the Glenforsa Hotel, said: ''The aircraft left
Squires Gate in Blackpool at 11.39 yesterday morning and they should
have arrived here at 2pm.''
Mr Price, also from the East Lancashire area, had known Mr Shaw since
his schooldays.
He added: ''I tried to phone the wife of a personal friend who was a
passenger on the aircraft last night, mainly to see if they were coming,
and to release their rooms if they weren't. I didn't get any reply.
''When I got round to phoning today, I was going to give him a
rollocking for not cancelling. But his wife told me he had left on the
plane. None of their wives had heard from them. I think they were
expecting their husbands to phone. My friend's wife was out for the
evening last night.''
Once the alarm was raised, an RAF Nimrod carried out a search of the
flight course the missing aircraft was expected to have taken. Checks
were made at airfields to discover whether the pilot had made a
diversion because of bad weather.
Members of RAF Kinloss mountain rescue team, who had been on a
training exercise on Skye, were last night at the site of the crash. An
accident investigation team is due to arrive today.
The search involved a Nimrod from RAF Kinloss, two RAF Sea King
helicopters, coastguard auxiliaries from Jura, Colonsay, Islay, and
Gigha, and the mountain rescue team.
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