Mountain Bear
If you are reading this, I apologise for apparently being so thick as not to have realised that your posts were an attempt to discuss in the abstract the relative merits of US and French law in accidents such as that which happened to Concorde, with a view to improving air safety and the international legal situation.
If you had stated this explicitly at first, I would probably not have interpreted your remarks as being the "jingoistic tripe" I have read so many, many times on this and other international lists and fora populated by your countrymen.
I would be very interested in following such an abstract discussion - I might learn something. I am grateful to PBL for teaching me MttB - a concept of direct utility to me.
As a person not professionally involved in aviation I am only directly affected by it when I buy an air ticket, or if an aircraft crashes into my house, or if I am killed, injured or suffer damage to my property as a result of an object such as a titanium strip falling from an aircraft and hitting me - an entirely foreseeable consequence, as there have been many instances of people being so harmed.
If that strip had not fallen from the DC10 at that moment but perhaps a few seconds later, and burst the tyre of a vehicle on the main road adjoining CDG, causing the driver to lose control and initiate a subsequent fatal multi-vehicle crash, or several hours later on the approach to its destination had fallen and injured someone below, should the licensed mechanic have been responsible for his bodged repair and the foreseeable damage that ensued, or not? Please tell me.
As I understand it, you are arguing that he should not. Or perhaps he should, given that there have been sufficient instances of persons on the ground being harmed by objects dropped from aircraft that the "average man" might be able to foresee them?
And so, why should it be that the mechanic might be responsible for the harm caused by the strip dropping from the sky onto someone, but not the harm caused by Concorde rolling over it and crashing as a result?
Last edited by Iron Duck; 21st Dec 2010 at 09:36.
Reason: Changed text of example