A bored RAF pilot flying nearly 200 service personnel to Afghanistan sent his passenger jet into a nosedive when a camera he had been playing with jammed the flight controls, a court martial heard.

As the Voyager aircraft plummeted 4,400ft in seconds, passengers were pinned to the ceiling and left thinking they were going to die.

But after Flt Lt Andrew Townshend regained control of the 197ft wingspan aircraft, he allegedly lied in both a technical log and service inquiry and insisted the incident had been caused by a technical fault.