THE MOTHER of a teenage boy killed in an Oxfordshire air crash said the RAF had “utterly failed him.”

Nicholas Rice spent the last seconds of his life desperately trying to free himself from a doomed aircraft after his tutor was killed in front of him, an inquest jury ruled yesterday.

The 15-year-old air cadet had been flying with retired RAF pilot Mike Blee when their plane clipped the tail of a glider at about 4,100 feet close to Drayton, near Abingdon, on June 14, 2009.

After more than 11 hours of deliberation, an inquest jury ruled that both Nicholas and Fl Lt Blee had died as a result of a number of factors. That led them to record verdicts of accidental death.

The jury ruled that neither Fl Lt Blee, nor glider pilot Albert Freeborn had managed to spot each other’s aircraft in time.

Mr Freeborn parachuted to safety, but Nicholas’ attempts to bail out failed as Fl Lt Blee had been killed when his spine snapped in the collision.

Fl Lt Blee, of St Mary’s Green, Abingdon, suffered from a rare condition which caused the bones in his spine to become fused together, meaning even a slight jolt could have resulted in a broken spine.

The cadets had been shown how to jettison the plane but only as a short sequence in a 13-minute film before the flight.

The jury said there had been systematic failures within the RAF which had contributed to the pair’s deaths, including the mismanagement of Fl Lt Blee’s condition and a failure to teach Nicholas how to leave the plane in an emergency.

Speaking after the inquest Nicholas’ mother, Julia, said: “The inquest has been the worst period of my life. In allowing my child to participate in an air experience I trusted that the RAF knew what they were doing and they would take care of him.

“It was devastating to discover they had utterly failed him.”

Mrs Rice said that the tragedy had occurred because Fl Lt Blee’s condition, Ankylosing Spondylitis, had meant that he was killed in the initial collision, leaving her son alone in the doomed plane.

Fl Lt Blee’s condition had been noted by the RAF in 1976 when he was blocked from doing parachute drills because of his fragile spine.

Mrs Rice added: “That this foreseeable risk was ignored by the RAF for 30 years is shameful.”

Nicholas had been a member of the Combined Cadet Force at the £9,060-a-year Elvian School in Reading, and had been taking part in the flight experience hosted by RAF Benson in Oxfordshire.

The inquest was told that since his death the training given to cadets had been improved and children were now shown exactly how to jettison an aircraft and use their parachutes.

Following the inquest, Fl Lt Blee’s family paid tribute to him via a statement read by lawyer Tim Scorer.

Coroner Alison Thompson said she would be using her powers under the coroner’s rules to write letters ensuring lessons had been learned from the double tragedy.