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Canadian Agency Investigates US Air Crash

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-like-a-law-school-hypothetical dept.

knorthern knight writes "When 2 light civilian planes collide in U.S. airspace in Virginia, the usual response includes calling in the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) to investigate and make recommendations based on their results. But what do you do when the crash involves two planes piloted by a crash investigator with the FAA and the chief medical officer with the NTSB? In order to avoid conflict of interest by American investigators working for these agencies, the investigation has been turned over to to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada as a neutral 3rd party."

1 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"But what do you do?" (NB: Not a trolling attem by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Compare this to the French investigation of the Air France crash from Brazil a couple of years ago where efforts were made both to protect the pilots' good names and to shift blame away from Airbus.

    I have to really take issue with this - right up until the black boxes were recovered, everything the BEA released implicated Airbus, to the point that Airbus had to issue several Airworthiness Directives regarding pitot tube icing and other things.

    It was only when the flight data recorders were recovered that the BEAs stance shifted, and the pilots actions were called into question. Its highly likely that the BEA will implicate both the pilots and Airbus in its final report later this year.

    So I think your assertion that the BEAs objectivity being in question is absurd.