In the early morning of 13th January 1993 this aircraft was intially flown empty from Stansted to Southend by the two pilots where it was loaded with parcels to be flown to Glasgow. The company had a contract with a parcel delivery company to ferry such freight. The aircraft set out from Southend at 06.59hrs and headed north-west eventually over the Liverpool area and then north towards Glasgow. The aircraft was seen flying over the Millom area at a height of around 400 feet and flying in and out of cloud and heading towards high ground. The weather over the fells on this morning was bad; with low cloud, rain and a strong wind. At the height the aircraft was flying it would not clear the ground ahead of it. It flew into the ground at around 08.15hrs near the top of Ponsonby Fell and broke up. A search operation was put into action and the crashed aircraft was found later that day. Sadly both pilots had been killed in the crash.
Pilot - Mr Neil Christopher Coxon, aged 35, of Duddenhoe End, Essex. Burial location unknown.
Pilot - Mr Robert Stephen Winter, aged 35, of Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire. Burial location unknown.
This Bandeirante was initially registered on the UK civilian register as G-BPDL in October 1988. It's ownership changed to Titan Airways in October 1991 and it was re-registered as G-ZAPE by Titan Airways in November 1992 to join their increasing fleet of aircraft.
This aircraft crashed into the hills shown on this photograph. With this incident being reasonably modern and within living memory I fully expect the young men who died to both have many living relatives, so creating this webpage could be seen as insensitive. This is not my intention. I feel that the location needed to be recorded after twenty five years so that it is not completely lost with the passage of time. The site appears to have cleared to an exceptional level and hardly any trace remains at the site twenty five years after the incident. The only trace of anything happening is a small bare peaty area where the forward part of the fuselage burnt out following the crash and even this shows vertually no trace of the aircraft ever being there.
The aircraft must have been carrying a cargo that included at least one parcel containing numerous small ribbon bows. For the number of fragments of the aircraft left at the site there are double the number of these small bows remaining.
