Most of you guys obviously didn't catch the news articles after the aircraft wreckage was recovered and the subsequent investigation conducted by one of Australia's foremost engineering experts in addition to an engine expert builder / rebuilder. One of these guys writes most of your ops manuals and the other probably rebuilds most the piston engines in the aircraft that you fly. The engineer(s) were commissioned by the Chief Pilot of the operator for insurance purposes.
They actually visited the crash site when the snow melted and found one engine was not running at the time of impact and that the propellor was feathered. How the ATSB worked this out, I don't know. They didn't even see that one of the propellors was actually in practically perfect order?
There was a post on PPrune quite some time about this from one of our regular (helicopter) posters. It showed an in-tact propellor in several photos. He took these very early on but didn't post them as he wanted to see what the report said first.
Personally I'd like to know why the ATSB refused to modify their report to reflect this error. It seems that it was just easy to blame the crash on the pilot.
My original comments stand that the independent writer missed this issue and merely "copied" what the ATSB said in their report still stand. Bad journalism for such an experienced writer.
As for the chidren of the passengers suing the operator, just a formality to obtain insurance from the carriers liability act under which you all operate commercially.