Dear colleagues,
We are experiencing a bit of a thread drift.
The deficiency of the B737 press system is well known and discussed in many threads on pprune and elswhere.
Another important info - Boeing settled with a major part of the Helios crash victims' families (but not all) out of court at the cost of almost 40 million EUR.
This is another proof of the above deficiency.
This thread was started to bring attention to the disgusting trend of criminalization of commercial aviation accidents.
Noone claims that the pilots were faultless.
Captain van Zanten of KLM 4805 did not make a mistake. He commited a crime that cost the highest ever number of victims in aviation history. Or did he?
Wiki:
The Dutch authorities were reluctant to accept the Spanish report blaming the KLM captain for the accident. The Netherlands Department of Civil Aviation published a response that, whilst accepting that the KLM aircraft had taken off "prematurely", argued that he alone should not be blamed for the "mutual misunderstanding" that occurred between the controller and the KLM crew, and that limitations of using radio as a means of communication should have been given greater consideration.
So should the courts in Larnaca and Athens put the blame only on Helios management? So should the
"limitations of the B737 press system have been given a greater consideration"? Or someone hopes that a criminal verdict should facilitate "another compensation" like the Boeing payout?!
