Originally Posted by
Rushed Approach
It's ridiculous (to me being UK based) because the whole point about aircraft investigations is that witness testimony is protected from being passed on to law enforcement agencies in the UK - i.e. aviation safety is placed above criminal proceedings. Clearly it's different in France. The reason for this is simple - if you screw up and are going to be prosecuted for it, then you are going to cover it up if there is a danger you will be locked up, hence every pilot would stay silent in any investigation in case they might be accused of a "crime".
So yes the French system does indeed appear to be different, but not for the better as far as flight safety is concerned some would argue.
I actually doubt that very much, do you seriously think that if you deliberately caused the death of 149 people in UK, and the evidence is plain on the CVR that you did it and you are still flying happily with the airline that the AAIB would not pass that evidence to the police? Of course they would pass all the evidence to the police or they would be criminally liable themselves.
There is a huge difference between an accident due to human error and a deliberate crash.