An aircraft captain has been criticised after failing to properly report an incident which affected a Stansted-bound flight last year.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) investigated after a report that ice began to form on the Aurign Air Services flight from Guernsey on November 29, 2003, as it passed over Southampton.

The report stated the aircraft entered several short-term uncommanded manoeuvres before full manual control was restored and continued on to Stansted without further incident.

The report found inappropriate post-flight incident reporting action and aircraft inspection resulted in the loss of valuable recorded data of the event.

After landing, the captain of the aircraft, a 55-year-old man with more than 11,000 hours flying experience carried out a visual inspection of the aircraft, which appeared normal.

The report said he decided not to write anything regarding the incident in the aircraft's technical log until six days after the incident.

Published Thursday August 5, 2004

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