Violation of weight regulations was, however, tolerated due to war difficulties in transport and pilots were encouraged to take responsibility for flights with overloaded aircraft. Moreover, minor smuggling of scarce goods by flying personnel was widespread and the baggage of important passengers was not checked nor weighted at all. Therefore, pilots had to estimate the weight of the aircraft. The investigation assumed, basing upon RAF form, that the weight of the load, including passengers, was 5324 lbs, which led to the conclusion about a take-off weight. According to M. Różycki, however, there are strong indications, that the form containing such a weight was fabricated by the commission to assume the absence of excessive overloading of the aircraft. According to this author, based on estimates and comparative data, the actual take-off weight of the aircraft was about 63,000 pounds, and it needed over 1600 yards to take-off, which was more, than 1530-yard strip available in Gibraltar at that time. Only in August 1943 the new 1800 yard strip was completed. Moroever, the main problem at this airport was bad weather conditions due to the mountainous environment, sea influences and winds, and accidents were often there, including two other Liberators in 1942 and 1943. Eduard Prchal himself was an average pilot, and in particular he was not an experienced pilot of heavy transport machines. He was a fighter pilot first and began training on Liberator only on December 22, 1942, and flew 292 hours and 10 minutes on this type until the accident. Co-pilot Stanley Herring, although an experienced bomb pilot, had no experience in solo piloting Liberator. On the other hand, Liberator aircraft were difficult to fly and did not tolerate errors, which resulted in a considerable accident rate during training. In addition, individual aircraft of the first two production series AL and AM had specific flight properties. Both Prchal and Herring did not know AL523 aircraft well, and they made only one daytime take-off and flight from Cairo on it. Prchal himself was not Sikorski's personal pilot, but Sikorski flew with him for the first time from England to Cairo, and expressed a wish, that he would pilot an aircraft on a way back too. As a result, Prchal was assigned to Liberator AL523, scheduled for return trip. A plan of Sikorski was to use his trust in Czechoslovak pilot for propaganda, to improve harsh relations between Polish and Czechoslovak governments in exile. After taking off too early, the aircraft started to loose height, and Prchal may have had an impression of jammed elevators indeed, due to a gust of wind.