Originally Posted by
itsnotthatbloodyhard
This could be considered ‘an honest and reasonable mistake of fact’, and would be grounds for a successful defence, even in a strict liability matter.
Interesting point.
Bizarrely, if you did the pre-flight altimeter check and knew that it was overreading by 50’, the defence might not work. But if you took off from some place where the check couldn’t be done and you didn’t know about the 50’ overread, the defence might work. The difference in objective safety risk is, of course, zero.