Originally Posted by
tucumseh
To be fair to the AAIB inspectors, their perception over time often changes with the emergence of evidence that has been concealed from them; especially on military accidents where they are only permitted to report on the evidence from the scene. Compare their report from any military accident with that of Shoreham and the differences are obvious. But Shoreham's lacks much critical analysis, so for example omits an assessment of why the Airworthiness Approval Note was predicated on the RAF being Hunter Design Authority; which it isn't, and never was. Therefore, it is unclear who exactly was responsible for many of the violations the AAIB reported. And to be clear, none of this would be apparent to the pilot.
In a civilian accident it is less likely that entire parts of the report will be withheld - for example, we have yet to see the AAIB report on the avionics from Chinook ZD576, which MoD and government has consistently refused to release even to Ministers. And the Inspector was prevented from giving any evidence to any Inquiry. So, we had a situation that his Senior Inspector's evidence to the MoK review in 2011 was quite different than that to the Fatal Accident Inquiry in 1996, which in turn differed from the official report. Not so much contradictory, but more expansive based on what he now knew; especially about the avionics. But yes, the problem is the official reports (MoD, AAIB, CAA) are never updated, so simply quoting the AAIB report at the current Inquest would be very misleading. Most importantly, its report cannot be used to used to apportion blame or liability, at it would be 'against the purposes for which the investigation was undertaken'. This was the subject of a court ruling on Shoreham, where Sussex Police unsuccessfully applied to disclose protected material.
This makes the Coroner's job very difficult, because he/she needs to be able to separate cause of accident and cause of death (accepting one usually leads to the other). It is common for Coroners to conflate the two - see the Bayliss case, where she completely ignored her remit to establish cause of death.
I wonder if the Shoreham Coroner will make the same ruling as the Bayliss Coroner? Witnesses are not to answer questions about events that occurred before they took up their current post. Shuffle a few people around just before the Inquest opens, and proceedings become farcically brief.
I can understand the AAIB views changing over time, but have a bit of a problem with the reports not being amended to reflect that. These reports are largely about learning from experience, so we all understand errors and problems that have occurred in the past and are better able to try and eliminate them in the future. If we have AAIB reports being used as reference material that are in error, then that dilutes their effectiveness, to the point where people may die in future because the wrong cause is given in the report. That seems to me to fly in the face of one key reason as to why we put so much time and effort into investigating the cause of accidents. Makes me wonder quite why the policy of not amending reports exists.