Crew wrestling with a "major control problem" on a flight from Newcastle asked passengers to move to the front to assist in steadying the aircraft, an official accident report revealed yesterday.

The captain issued a Mayday distress call after he and his co-pilot struggled to cope with a practically immovable control column.

But the crew managed to land the Gill Aviation Fokker F28 aircraft, with 71 passengers on board, safely at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

Ice problems probably caused the difficulty with the mechanism which controlled the plane's ability to climb and descend, said the report from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

Both pilots "had to use extreme force on the controls in order to try and overcome the control restriction", the report added.

Flying manually, the crew's problems were compounded by the inadvertent switching back on of the autopilot, which had been switched off when the control problem began, said the report.

The plane was travelling to Paris from Gill's home airport of Newcastle on November 3.

The control problem, which came during the descent to Paris, caused the aircraft to pitch up and down.

The report said: "The aircraft began to gently pitch up and the crew, in an effort to prevent this pitch up, pushed the control column forward."

The forward pressure needed on the control column "took both pilots to hold it in the almost fully-forward position", said the report.

It went on: "The commander instructed the cabin crew to move all the passengers to fill up the seats from the front to assist in pitching the aircraft down, and to prepare for an emergency landing.

"This was accomplished promptly and in an orderly manner."

The AAIB recommended that Fokker users should be made aware of possible ice problems.