An inquest will begin today into the deaths of five men who were killed when the private jet they were travelling in crashed into a house.
Pilots Mike Roberts, 63, and Michael Chapman, 57, and passengers, Scots motor racing driver David Leslie, 54, racing team owner Richard Lloyd, 63, and graduate Christopher Allarton, 25, died when the Cessna Citation 500 plane plunged into a suburban cul-de-sac on March 30, 2008.
The aircraft hit a house in Romsey Close, Farnborough, Kent, causing a major fire which destroyed the property.
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 garage of a neighbouring house and a car parked next to it were also destroyed by the impact and ensuing fire. But no-one on the ground was injured.
A report last year by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said the aircraft departed from Biggin Hill airport in Kent bound for Pau in south-west France.
One minute into the flight, Mr Roberts transmitted a message saying they were making an immediate return to Biggin Hill.
The report said that it was probable that a mechanical failure within the air cycle machine - part of the mechanism which helps with cabin ventilation - caused engine vibration which led the crew to try to make the return.
The AAIB said a rivet head securing the left engine fuel cut-off lever had become detached at some time prior to the crash.
This missing rivet head "may have led to an inadvertent shutdown of that (left-side) engine", the AAIB said.
The report said that an attempt to relight the second engine "was probably started before the relit first engine had reached idle speed, resulting in insufficient time for enough thrust to be developed to arrest the aircraft's rate of descent before ground impact".
The aircraft did not have, nor was required to have, "black box" flight recorders, meaning that information critical to identifying the cause of the accident was not available to investigators.
Renowned former British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) driver Mr Leslie was a father-of-two who was Scottish karting champion five times before winning the Formula Ford title in 1978.
He had spells in Formula Three, Sportscars and Thunder Saloons before spending over a decade in the British Touring Car Championship.
He won nine BTCC races, finishing second overall in 1999, and continued to race until his death, winning a BritCar race at Silverstone as recently as March 22.
Apex Motorsport boss Mr Lloyd, also a former BTCC runner-up, had three daughters and a wife. Mr Roberts was from Effingham in Surrey and Mr Chapman was from Shoreham in West Sussex.
Mr Allarton, from Newark in Nottinghamshire, had graduated from Coventry University with a 2.1 in motorsport engineering and was part way through a Master's degree when he was offered a post at Apex.
The inquest, which is expected to last a few days, will start at Bromley Civic Centre from 10am.
source: thisislondon.co.uk
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