KATLPAX:
Your post raised a worry, even though I had no friend or family on AF 447.
There is a pernicious route by which a safety investigation is corrupted by both penal and civil-tort investigations that have damages (money) and punishment (money/jail/cert revocation) as their ultimate outcomes.
Safety investigations, without those encumbrances, may uncover and report (via limdis) critical interface elements without fear of cost/lawyers etcetera. I remain eternally grateful to the judges in the U.S.A. They have time and again upheld the privileged status of mishap safety investigations (not the JAG investigations, which a FOIA can get released) in military crashes. (In which class are the mishaps I was a member of investigation teams a few years back).
As I watch the drama -- drama in part self-generated, and in part manufactured to position parties in legal proceedings -- unfold in re this tragic crash, I consider the Spanish incident (we discussed on these forums a few months back, problem with a configuration fault / flaps, leading to a crash) and the Italian incident more recently discussed on the forums.
If the aim and psychology of a party pursuing a case is not wholly
air minded, the myopia and tunnel vision afflicing said parties -- flavored with either virulence or simple desire for financial gain/remedy, in my view blinds them to how complex and interrelated causal factors are (plural required here, even though we are mostly among aviation professionals).
Those of you who are not, please take note.
The risk is that this whole proceeding distills down to a hunt for scapegoats rather than unearthing of root causes that can, in combination, be addressed to remedy whatever set of faults set up AF447 for arrival at the surface of the ocean ... not their intended point of landing.
This wasn't a rookie crew. That they were unable to overcome a challenge presented to them, for one reason or another, must be mitigated for the benefit of the entire flying public. It may not just be an Airbus issue here, even though the mishap aircraft is an Airbus.
BEA has a hell of a challenge in front of them in terms of remaining objective. I sincerely hope they are up to it.
I worry, for the sake of getting the procedural or mechanical fixes appropriate to this event sorted out and resolved, that the cross contamination of interests previously raised will leak into their work, and corrupt the findings.
My appeal to the hard working folks of the BEA team is to be mindful of the traps and risks of contamination, and to deflect them. It ain't gonna be easy.