I suspect that this doesnīt belong to this thread but I canīt help but put in my two cents. First an interesting article about the Brazilian GOL accident and discusses criminalization:
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/...13/index1.html
It seems to me that there is an worldwide tendency to decriminalize aviation accidents unless there is clear evidence for criminal behavior. This is to make all involved to become less defensive and to cooperate with the investigation that aims at understand what happened and preventing it from happeneing again. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I am impressed - and as a proud Brazilian - embarassed by how many people are involved in determining "the causes" of the TAM accident. The official agency for this is CENIPA, the Air Force organization that investigates accidents with the aim of preventing them. Even the officers at CENIPA say that the criminal investigations in the GOL and TAM accidents made their job more difficult. To make things more complicated, in Brazil it is the Air Force that administer that Air Traffic Control (equipments, software and people). Hence, it may be a little complicate to have the Air Force investiganting the Air Force...
About the TAM accident we have a lot of people involved. Besides CENIPA, we have two Committees (Senate and House) doing their own investigation (I believe only one congressman has some knowledge of aviation). Then there are the Federal and the Local Polices plus the
Attorney General and Minister of Defense (in the GOL accident I remember seeing the Defense Minister in TV talking about the causes of the accident a few days after it happened). Right now, CENIPA was collaborating with the House Committee (CPI) and they did bring the black boxes to clarify to the congressmen what they showed. Now, they decided not to do it any longer, among other things because France and the Airbus industry protested against CENIPA revealing the black boxes. So now the CPI is planning to have its own experts to tell them what the boxes show. They are planning to compare the black boxes of the landing in Congonhas with the landing in Porto Alegre in the same plane and crew just hours before.
All of this to say that I am not sure that this happens all over the world... Just not sure... Will listen if you all see this as pertinent to this thread.