RAF lifts ‘60-year ban’ on popular treat after tests find it won’t explode in cockpit

The Tunnock’s tea cake was said to be banned from RAF flights in 1965 after a mid-flight chocolate explosion

RAF lifts ‘60-year ban’ on popular treat after tests find it won’t explode in cockpit (Creative Commons)

The Royal Air Force has lifted a ‘60-year ban’ on a popular treat after tests found it won’t explode in cockpit.

Tunnock’s tea cakes have been cleared to be taken on board RAF planes after a 60-year-old myth they explode was debunked.

The snack was said to be banned from RAF flights in 1965 after one exploded over the cockpit when a captain pulled an emergency depressurising switch on a training sortie.

But an RAF Centre of Aerospace Medicine test has now found the Scottish marshmallow and biscuit base snack does not explode, the BBC reports.

The snack was put inside an altitude chamber and lifted to 8,000ft, before being rapidly decompressed to 25,000ft to see if they would explode.

Although the marshmallow escaped the tea cake’s milk chocolate casing, it did “not appear to explode and cause a risk to in-flight safety", according to the broadcaster.

Dr Oliver Bird, an instructor at the RAF Centre of Aerospace Medicine, told the BBC: “The best advice is that the snacks are kept frozen and in their foil wrappings until pilots are ready to consume them.”

Tunnock’s is a family company led by 92-year-old Sir Boyd Tunnock, whose grandfather Thomas Tunnock founded the business in 1890 as a bakery in Uddingston, Lanarkshire.

The iconic tea cake was developed in 1956. The company now employs more than 600 people and exports products to over 30 countries.