Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
True - inasmuch as the root cause of every airborne accident is the fact that the aircraft was flying at the time ...
Which is precisely why all investigations must confirm, as a matter of urgency, that the aircraft was legally permitted to fly. Almost everything else flows from that. If it wasn't, the reasons why tell the investigator so much.
In military accidents this is the role of the Service Inquiry engineer. In civilian accidents, the AAIB. The latter are pretty good at it; although in this case they didn't go too far, but said enough to identify the culprits. The former simply don't bother, and it is left to the public to investigate. The 'final act' syndrome.
"The root causes of most accidents are usually deficiencies in systems, whether these are systems for management, design, certification, maintenance, and/or operation".
(Tony Cable, Senior Investigator Air France Concorde, PanAm Lockerbie, Chinooks ZD576 and ZA721, etc, etc.).
Shoreham has root causes in all these domains. In only one has legal action been taken.