I'm fuming. I'm very close to a member of the BOI and I know just how long they took to complete the inquiry. They left no stone unturned and were 100% professional in their deliberations, including keeping an open mind and certainly not setting out to find blame. A BOI does not apportion blame; full stop!
I am genuinely sorry that you are so upset but I would ask you to read the following extracts from the BOI process concerning the issue of blame.
The first extracts are from comments made by the Station Commander:
CAUSE
3. The Board have assessed the available evidence thoroughly and I believe that they have offered a coherent and rational explanation of the events leading to the accident. In particular, I found the evidence of the radar tracks compelling. Moreover, I did not find the arguments over "instructions" wholly germane to the question. I accept that the "instruction" from air traffic to the formation was not an order but it was reasonable to assume that the crews would comply with the "advice" given and doing so placed the aircraft and crews in an unsafe situation. I am therefore content that the Board's determination of the cause of the accident is soundly based. Indeed, I would go further and suggest that the word "potentially" should be deleted from the Cause, as the "instruction" given was clearly unsafe.
I am somewhat confused by the mixing of 'advice' and 'instruction' but, in the next paragraph, the controller is named before the following comments are made:
In particular, I am satisfied that: the accident occurred at the bottom of a straight line descent from FL72: the request to descend to "your min vectoring altitude" and the aircrafts subsequent flightpaths were consistent with the Board's coclusion that the pilots were flying on instruments; the Board's consideration of the statement of the eyewitnesses had been thorough and provides a reasonable explanation of what they saw; that, despite remaining discrepancies, there was a high probability that the aircraft reported were Axis formation; and that Dr*******'s credible evidence concerning the unrelaibility of eyewitness testimony offers a satifactory explanation of the remaining discrepancy over the number of tails on the aircraft observed. I did not find the "Alternative Cause" put forward by Flt Lt ****** persuasive
It seems to me that there is no doubt that the Station Commander refers to a cause of accident (not a probable cause) in determining that the aircraft followed a straight line descent in IMC into the ground . Moreover, he links a "clearly unsafe instruction" to the aforementioned cause and goes on to name the controller concerned. It seems like 'apportioning blame' to me.
The next reporting officer is the AOC and he notes that "A BOI does not apportion blame and I note that none has been apportioned in this case". I concur with him in as much that the BOI itself did dot apportion blame. However, he then goes on to say in para 7:
I support the Board's analysis of causes and factors other than finding myself in agreement with the Stn Cdr that the cause of the accident was that the formation accepted an unsafe ATC instruction rather than one that was[I]potentially[I] unsafe
The final reporting officer is the CinC Strike Command who states:
I am therefore in no doubt that the Air Traffic descent information "BITE21 descend initially 4000ft on the Portree 29.62" was unsafe, and I agree with my Stn Cdr and AOC 3Gp that the word "potentially" be removed from the Board's Cause for the accident
Please note again that 'cause' is used and not 'probable cause'. Between three air ranking officers the words 'advice', instruction' and 'information' are used to describe the actions of the controller. However, in my book, they all apportion blame to the controller concerned and I do consider them to be part of the BOI procedure and not divorced from it.
I attended the entire Court Martial and unlike this BOI, I was very struck by the eyewitness statements. I have yet to receive further documentation from this BOI which will give me the detailed information on how the eyewitnesses could have been so confused as to what they saw and when they saw it. Please don't forget that the original BOI never bothered to interview a single eyewitness; it is hardly surprising that one can become slightly sceptical.
There are two sides to every story.