Winch-Control wrote:
Given we are in the 21st century, is it not to be considered unacceptable, that the authorities, given to them power to investigate, cannot with all the evidence laid in front of them come up with an answer as to the cause?
I would suggest 7 days, 10 at the most is adequate. If the AIB need 12 months plus to resolve the reasons for any accident/incident I would suggest they are sadly very lacking, and not fit for service.
Possibly they are financially capped, short of personnel, these issues must be resolved.
It is not acceptable in this day and age that an incident is not resolved within a very short space of time.
Getting to the root cause of an accident, particularly one of this nature, in which none of the crew survived, is a slow laborious task if the job is to be done thoroughly. Most of the possible causes postulated in this thread will need to be discussed, investigated and ruled out. That could involve microscope analysis of the crash components (and others from similar aircraft), checking of manufacturing and maintenance records. Given the number of critical components in a helicopter, many of these investigations will prove to be dead ends, although they must be ruled out for the avoidance of doubt. Some tests may require test rigs to be built to allow accelerated lifing of components. The rigs and the subsequent tests all take time. With the reliance of software in the control loop of modern aircraft, pages & pages of code may need testing and analysis. Spacecraft have been lost for the sake of one mistyped character.
It must also be borne in mind that the AAIB does not have a team of highly skilled experts sitting idle waiting for an accident to give them something to do. Any investigation around the world which has a UK involvement, either through location of the accident, place of manufacture, place of registry, or nationality of the victims could be drawing on the time of essential staff.
That the AAIB manage to get a report out in a year, is an achievement in itself and a credit to them given the work involved.
According to Wikipedia, AAIB has 49 employees. Given their workload and output, I'm inclined to agree with Winch-Control's third paragraph.