Mull of Kintyre families seek new inquiry into Chinook crash
Families of the 29 dead in the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash were seeking to keep a judicial review alive as judges weighed whether a 32-year-old case was still timely.
A High Court hearing in London on July 14 will decide whether relatives of those killed in the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash can keep pressing for a new inquiry into one of the Royal Air Force’s worst peacetime disasters.
The crash happened on June 2, 1994, when RAF Chinook HC-2 ZD576 went down in south-west Scotland on the Mull of Kintyre. All 29 people on board were killed, including 25 British intelligence personnel and four crew, after the flight left RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland for Fort George near Inverness. For years, the dead pilots, Flight Lieutenants Richard Cook and Jonathan Tapper, were blamed for gross negligence.
That finding was set aside in 2011 after an independent review led by Lord Philip examined the fatal accident and all available evidence. The Ministry of Defence apologised to the pilots’ families and formally removed the negligence finding from their records. The bereaved families argue the ministry still has not provided an independent and effective investigation, and that key details about the aircraft’s airworthiness and what led up to the crash emerged only gradually over many years.
The Chinook Justice Campaign, formed in 2024 by many of the families, says more than 55 relatives are involved and that its petition for a public inquiry has drawn more than 47,000 signatures. The group has also published 110 critical questions about the crash. The group says crash-related papers remain sealed for 100 years.
Government lawyers, by contrast, contend the claim was brought too late and should have been filed in 2011, when the negligence finding was removed. The campaign’s supporters say the legal and factual record was still incomplete then, and that the case cannot be separated from the long delay in disclosing material about the Chinook’s airworthiness.
Former defence secretary Sir Liam Fox backed the families by delivering a letter to Downing Street on June 2, 2026, exactly 32 years after the crash. He said there were deep concerns that vital information had been withheld from ministers and Parliament, and that the MoD’s information on the aircraft’s airworthiness was not correct.
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