Video Cameras on the flight Deck

[Wino]

Dududud,
Aviation is like any other over regulated endeavor.

Assuming you are british, I will give you are real life example parallel.

Have you practiced your archery at the village green this week? If not you are breaking the law. Well guess what, there are obscure and outdate regulations still on the books (nothing ever gets erased) that a well knowleged but lacking in total common sense prosecutor could use against the crew of any flight. Captain cuts off a prosecutor from drinking on the plane, doesn't let him upgrade etc, prosecutor starts filing motions and subpeoning tapes etc...c

Nope, no protections no cameras. And by protections I mean fix the CVR protections first.


I can see PLENTY of scenarios where I might do the MOST legal thing rather than the most safe thing once you start inserting prosecutions into the mix. (Start with a diversion, did you go to the closest field or the safest? You went one mile further to the one without the 40 mph crosswind with blowsnow. Into Jail with you!)


Safety was not gained by the prosecution. Instead what has happened is that accident investigations become cover your ass, wait till my lawyer gets here and MAYBE I will answer your questions, rather than what happened, can we do it safer excersizes. By prosecuting in that case EVERY accident investigation in the future was harmed. Safety in the future has been thrown out the window in the quest for "Vengence and justice."

The valujet prosecutions caused many of the same problems in all the accident investigations that followed. Did Sabre tech comit a crime? Yep. Should they have been prosecuted, only if you care about that 100 people that are already dead, and not the 1000s of living people that might come later that you might have saved. They could have put Saber tech out of business and imposed better oversite regulations without the prosecutions and mechanics wouldn't be calling their lawyers the second they hear a plane goes down.

As to the need.
The stated need is the lack of "witness marks" on instruments now with CRT displays. (For those that have never participated in an accident investigation, witness marks are the scars or marks made on the glass of an oldfashioned gauge like a VSI or Airspeed indicator that is caused by the impact. Usually the glass will get a mark where the pointer was pointing when the instruments were subjected to the horrific stresses of the impact. Those marks will tell you what the gauge was reading at impact) Well that is really a load of crap. It would be MORE usefull and more precise to simply record the CRTs as someone suggested.

Cheers
Wino