I'm not going to get into the Habsheim thing again, but the test flights performed for the BEA were done by Capt. Bechet, who was acting in his BEA capacity and, regardless, was an employee of Air France, *not* Airbus. The report of the investigation Bechet headed was implicitly critical of his employer, so accusations of bias are a little hard to fathom.
BZ had nothing to do with any of it. (And Gordon Corps, who was the "hands-on" lead pilot engineer at the time of testing/certification would likely have been perfectly open to suggestion...)
[EDIT: I think I see what you're saying regarding the "factor of three" - I think you're assuming that the gradual increase in losses of second-gen aircraft is because of a drop-off in basic piloting skills, and if that's the case I think your conclusion is wrong. Bear in mind that those second-gen jets will have been flying for decades by that point (with attendant increases in maintenance issues), and that a lot of them would have been sold off to territories with a poor safety record, e.g. Africa.]
@Linktrained - Almost certainly. I know there's a tendency to romanticise the early days of commercial aviation, but I can't help but harbour a suspicion that if someone were to have offered the modern avionics and flying aids we have today to pilots of Gann's generation, they'd have bitten that person's arm off to have them!
Last edited by DozyWannabe; 14th Aug 2014 at 00:31.