As a local, I have took a bit of interest in this, and from the start it has nagged at me that if the pilot knew there was a serious problem, why did he overfly a flat park when it could have landed, been easily secured and refuelled, it is only a few hundred yards east of the crash site.
Although not an aviator, I am an engineering designer so understand the fuel system having read through the report and old thread in here.
What is not clear to me, and that you pilots of these machines may know, is that is it really that difficult to establish that one turbine has flamed out, the report seems to indicate that the annunciation are not that clear (might just be me).
A FAI has been mooted politically, it's not hard to see where this will look:
1) The report is silent on why Police Scotland set the tasks to the crew.
2) Is airwave not recorded?, so little on this or the traffic in there.
3) Have other duty pilots assigned to police Scotland been interviewed regarding pressure to fly longer missions than are comfortable and perhaps a culture of exceeding fuel minima's?
Police Scotland are in real trouble, having let two people die by the side of the road and also killed a man during breach of the peace arrest, the chief constable has resigned, and of course the amalgamation of the Scots forces is a political decision.
Surely the Police must assess the risk of putting air support into situations instead of just tasking all sorts and leaving it to the pilot.
I fear scapegoating here, after the farce of the other Glasgow FAI where another vehicle in public service killed members of the public, but from the outset it was clear that the Council were never going to get sanctioned.
Finally,on the engineering, a system I designed that almost killed people when mis-managed by the operator. Several experts criticised the complexity of the system, yet each one had recommendations that made it even more complicated to operate. I must say that I wouldn't from an engineering perspective like to rely on sensors to stop and start overheating/dry pumps from and always on perspective, and if they operated automatically on level sensors, my personal belief is that this would be prone to malfunction.
The bus coupler device to operate the essential instruments does seem ridiculous in this instance, not having this in an accessible location in a single pilot operation. I would have thought (and I don't know if aviation permits the approach) that essential instruments circuits automatically transfer and let the circuit breakers do their job in case it's the instrument circuit itself that's faulty.
Very sad situation all round.