WOrkER,
Your posts trouble me deeply, the more so since I believe that these pilots might have been negligent, but do not accept that they have been proved so.
You say that if there is nothing to place before Ministers to refute negligence, plus ca change. So, you believe that absence of evidence of innocence is de facto evidence of guilt. That is not the basis of the criminal law in this country, yet had the pilots survived, they would surely have been tested before the criminal courts if your argument held sway.
You say that "we" know what the pilots did. I do not. Nor do I, or you, know what the pilots did not do, beyond the obvious point that they did not, for whatever reasons that we do not know, prevent the aircraft from striking the Mull.
You say "we" know the pilots were negligent. With the greatest respect, "we" know nothing of the sort; we merely find that the most likely explanation from the few known facts and our own previous experience. That is not proof of guilt. It is not sufficient for the finding of negligence to stand. The Minister does not need to be persuaded that the verdict of negligence can be proved wrong. He needs to be persuaded that the factual evidence was insufficient to support the finding of gross negligence in the first place. These positions are further apart than you seem able to comprehend.
For the record, I too deplore the frequent abuse hurled at the Air Marshals on this forum. They did not shirk their responsibilty, though they did, in my opinion, go too far in their conclusion.