@jcj:
It seems to be a truism that when regulators get themselves involved in accident investigation and resolution, things go wrong (e.g. UK CAA with the BA 747 approach incident, US FAA several times - but notably with the DC-10 'Gentlemen's Agreement' post-Windsor).
The point is that because journalists frequently can't be bothered to learn the difference between the investigatory body and the regulator, on that occasion the BEA were unfairly tarnished.
Re: that incident, the apparent "time discrepancy" that the retired AAIB investigator noted turned out ot be a misreading of the data. The photo sent to the Swiss for analysis proved nothing, as the only person to suggest that the boxes in the photo and the ones from the crashed aircraft should have been one and the same was a journalist. Generally when you've got non-technical people searching for something, you have another example around to show them what it looks like.
Last edited by DozyWannabe; 19th Jul 2012 at 12:08.