Now that I’m out, I feel I can comment more freely without the fear of the plods knocking on my door.
Some years ago I was appointed President of a Board of Inquiry into a [non-fatal] accident. We had to work bloody hard to avoid finding the guys negligent [which we considered they weren’t], because of the way the Manual was written. Basically, if they were capable of conducting a safe take-off, which of course they were otherwise they would not be flying, and they crashed, then they had to be found negligent. Only the degree of negligence varied. We managed to find them excusably negligent because of the unusual [almost unique] technical failure.
The SASO didn’t like that, wanting to hang the guilty bastards, so he ordered me to re-convene with a new set of TORs. We flatly refused to change our verdict, and thankfully the Staish [a first rate man] gave us his unqualified backing. Nonetheless, the pilot ended up with a hats on bollocking by the AOC.
However, with the loss of crown immunity, [which happened not long after my Inquiry] the whole Annex of advice on findings was completely re-written, including the bit about not finding the dead negligent.
I have now signed the petition, and knowing just how unique some of these technical failures can be, I conclude that a transient technical failure was the most probable cause. I will never accept that these 2 professionals, knowing where they were geographically, could conceivably have become spatially so unaware in such a short timescale that they allowed the aircraft to fly into rock-filled IMC.