I love your magazine, but this article is completely out of order. Under European law, pilots and mechanics are also judged by EASA (EU FAA) and not in a criminal court. The French lawsuit was against Continental as a company, not against the mechanic. It should state the great responsibilities companies have to savety in aviation. In the Brazilian case your also not quite on the spot. Of course ATC srewed up and assigned two aircraft the same flightlevel, but you forgot to mention that the crew was very unfamiliar with the brand new jet and did by accident, switch off the transponder leaving ATC unaware of it's altitude and disabeling the TCAS system. Off course the pilots didn't do that on purpose and shouldn't face time in prison, but your report should be more objective and less chauvinistic than this one!
Thomas Boyle,
Thanks. You're right and justice has been done. My comment was on the fact that the article states that US regulations are more fair to pilots and mechanics than EU laws, which isn't true to my opinion. I wonder what happens under US law when the FAA concludes after investigation that a pilot made a severe imputable mistake leading to an accident. Will there be no criminal investigation and possible prosecution then? I can hardly imagine. As a European pilot and a surgeon, I always hear horrible stories from my American collegues about lawyers hunting them down, just for doing their job the way they where teached to do it.
In the Italian case of the ATR 72 posted bij "glideslope", the pilots did run out of fuel when their faulty gauges showed they had more than enough. The investigation revealed however that the crew didn't do the math! They didn't crosscheck the quantity they really had on board with the gauges, nor did they monitor if the amount of gas they burned was in accordance with the fuel left. The marvelous job they did on ditching the plane doesn't discharge the pilots from performing as they should have done, in which case they would have found the faulty fuel-indication.
