Jim Swire - Initial Inquiries

Initial Inquiries

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) of Britain's Department of Transport immediately started an investigation. The AAIB quickly found evidence at the scene of the crash indicating that it was not an accident but that the aircraft had been brought down by an explosion. From parts of the aircraft fuselage retrieved from the Lockerbie vicinity, the AAIB began a painstaking reconstruction of the jumbo jet in an aircraft hangar at Longtown, Cumbria.

On 29 September 1989 U.S. President George H. W. Bush set up the President's Commission into Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) to look into the security measures needed in the light of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. The PCAST report was presented to the President on 5 May 1990 and its recommendations were widely reported.

A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) into the Lockerbie bombing was conducted in Scotland by Sheriff Principal John Mowatt QC in October 1990. Disappointingly for Dr Swire and for UKFF103, the FAI was – like an inquest – concerned with simply establishing the facts of the Lockerbie bombing, rather than discovering why it happened and who did it.

UKFF103 renewed its demand for a public inquiry into all of the unresolved aspects of the bombing.