Yes I was at Prestwick at that time. Used have lunch occaisionally in the SAL staff canteen. The incident cast a great gloom over the whole of Scotland. The aircraft in question was on a sales trip to Libya and no doubt being hard worked doing STOL take-offs and landings on rough terrain' date=' but an identical (fatal) incident a few months earlier in Papua New Guinea should have warned everybody. The flaw was not exactly "main spar failure" as reported at the time but in the Y arrangement U/C and wing struts that failed, this led to wing failure. Have a look at attached pic.(from Old Props site) The loads on this area, flying and landing, must have taken a lot of punishment on the largely unmade strips. All six onboard were killed. Pioneers served in places like Aden, Malaya, Borneo with the RAF and in dozens of other 3rd world countries in civilian use.[/quote']*** Duncan,this accident was a carbon copy of the 'Spirit of St Louis' replica that crashed around here a couple of years ago,a botch repair on a lift strut caused the failure at the Y joint as well,to have undercarriage loads transmitted to the wing like this is not really a good idea,when you look at what holds the wings onto a full size aircraft, and you realise the importance of the distribution of loads it also brings home the importance of structural integrity as well,as you say the stresses of lots of short landings and take offs was probably a leading part played in the failure of that Twin Pioneer wing.