Originally Posted by
Lomon
Playing Devils advocate
Now that airlines are allowed to fly through some of the ash clouds providing the engine manufacturer has certified their engines are up to the task, where will the liability lie if there is (perish the thought) an incident?
The engine manufacturer for stating their engines can cope in the ash?
The airline for taking the engine manufacturers word?
The regulator for accepting the idea?
Hmmm the lawyers must be rubbing their hands in glee and anticipation!
Liability will lie whereever the lawyers get the courts to decide it does - as per usual. If I was an ambulance chaser of this type, I'd be far more excited about pitot tubes, and birds.
Where does the liability lie in
those cases ?
The aircraft / component mfr. who designed to the (inadequate) tests ?
The regulators who set the tests ?
The airlines who carried on flying, based on the certification, after previous incidents showed inadequacies ?
Surely if you look at the list of previous pitot incidents almost all with one type of probe, it was obvious they weren't good enough... and clearly a bird ingestion standard based on only one 4lb bird is totally inadequate for flying near flocks of geese.
Obviously (if you are an ambulance chaser)
someone should have spotted those issues and taken action before people died. Who ? Whoever has the money (or just sue them all).
VA, on the other hand, hasn't managed to down an aircraft yet. A few broken, or prematurely worn, engines will be sorted out between the airlines and the mfrs. There's probably more money in hitting the poor delayed punters with "sue for a refund" scams.