Leicester helicopter crash recordings disputed in £2.15bn High Court claim
Leonardo wants flight and cockpit recordings from the Leicester City helicopter crash as it defends a £2.15bn claim by Vichai's family.
Helicopter maker Leonardo faced opposition at the High Court in London on Thursday 5 November over its bid to obtain recordings from the crash that killed Leicester City owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and four others outside the King Power Stadium.
Vichai’s widow Aimon and their four children are seeking £2.15 billion in compensation from the Italian manufacturer. Leonardo wants flight data and cockpit voice recordings held by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) to help defend the claim.
The company says the AW169 helicopter was not defective and argues that unreasonable acts or omissions by pilot Eric Swaffer caused the crash. Representing Leonardo, Tom Bird told the court that the data was relevant to the case’s key issues, among them the fatal accident and its causes.
Philip Shepherd KC, for the family, said Leonardo had full access to the data during the AAIB’s five-year investigation and had already carried out many of the tests it now wanted to repeat. He said Leonardo was hoping to uncover something through a speculative search, despite a painstaking investigation that had lasted five years.
Keith Morton KC, for the AAIB, said the accident had already been “extensively investigated” and that disclosure would not assist Leonardo’s case. Nicholas Yeo KC, for the British Airline Pilots’ Association, said releasing cockpit recordings outside safety investigations would have an “adverse impact” on pilots’ trust and could affect their co-operation with future inquiries. He said Leonardo proposed to analyse the inflection of the flight crew’s voices to advance a case blaming the pilot-in-command.
The helicopter spun out of control after taking off from the pitch following Leicester City’s match against West Ham on 27 October 2018. Vichai, Swaffer, co-pilot Izabela Lechowicz and passengers Nusara Suknami and Kaveporn Punpare died. A jury inquest in Leicester concluded in 2025 that the deaths were accidental.
The AAIB found that seizure of the tail rotor bearing began a chain of failures that ended in an unrecoverable loss of control of the pitch of the tail rotor blades. During the investigation, the manufacturer issued 16 service bulletins and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) published nine airworthiness directives for AW169 and AW189 helicopters. The AAIB’s report makes eight safety recommendations to EASA.
Mrs Justice O’Farrell is expected to defer her decision on the recordings until a later date.
