It baffles me why so many (obviously) intelligent people can't seem to see the wood from the trees. However, there is a glimmer of hope....
I may be wrong but there seems to be a consensus that we all agree that:
no-one will ever know what occurrred on the flight-deck that day, nor the crew's decision-making process that led them to fly into the hill.
If someone disagrees, I would welcome their comment.
Most of the rest of our debate on a lack of airworthiness, transient engine/control malfunctions, strange control positions, VMC or not, viz, cloud base, MSA, navigation techniques, eating habits, VIP passengers or even landing at an LZ are all important but they are side-issues. They are secondary to the sad but ultimate truth that we just don't know the true sequence of events....at all.
The lack of a CVR/ADR in the HC2 is the reason why we don't know and why so many mil accidents to old, legacy ac recommend their fitment. In 2 other accidents in RAFSTC, that happened about the same time, (one of which was FJ and another Multi), this fact was enough to ensure that there was insufficient data to assess "with no doubt whatsoever". Those crews did not get labelled with the tag of gross negligence - in other words, manslaughter. Why was it different for ZD576?
Lastly, I believe that some would say that the reviewing officers made their decisions based on what was presented to them by the BOI and so, it must stand. Frankly, that is a cop-out for 2 reasons:
a. If the BOI had done more 'digging' in 1994, then many of those important side-issues might have been more fully addressed - perhaps they didn't because the chain of command wouldn't have let them/liked it/overruled it or because there was not time. All of which undermine the conclusion of the reviewing officers which, anyway, overruled the BOI findings.
b. BOIs and their reviewers are inherently compromrised by their own chain of command and are at best introverted and parochial.
Even if all those issues were discarded, then the sheer weight of argument and the fact that , would allow today's generation of accident investigators to assess the BOI process and compare it to modern 'best-practice'. As someone said, 'there were too many holes in the cheese' to allow the crew to take all the flak. I suspect that a modern investigator would come to a very different conclusion to that reached by the reviewing officers in question. I would also like to think that a modern perspective would result in an apology to the crew's families and a removal of the stain on their character.
Last edited by flipster; 14th Apr 2009 at 20:20.