Nothing to do with blame and general procedure, but something that interested me.
I was at a conference on Friday at Cranfield, where we had a presentation from AAIB on drones (which now seems to be the official term, whether we like it or not). They showed what they could do with theirs. AAIB have a moderately sophisticated camera drone and rather more sophisticated set of analysis software behind it.
It seems that at Shoreham, amongst other places, they deployed the drone, which then set up an automatic GPS controlled scan pattern above the accident site, which then in a matter of a few minutes captured the whole site. They are then able to turn that into a 3D model which the inspectors can then analyse from multiple angles, in slow time back at Farnborough.
The speaker showed the Shoreham site, and superimposed it on ground/tripod based imagery obtained by the local police. The results were largely the same, but apparently produced in a much shorter time than the police method, using a fraction of the manpower. We were shown other images - one was I am pretty certain the Carfest Gnat accident, two others I didn't recognise the specific instances were a helicopter crash into a large field, a glider collision with the top of the hangar, allowing easy examination of witness marks, and a microlight accident into trees, allowing examination of the broken branches and thus an indication of the final tragectory.
I thought it was a very impressive and clever use of latest technology in support of air accident investigation. If nothing else, it must significantly reduce the time before a site can be cleared of debris, and more importantly, bodies.
I shouldn't be surprised as such that AAIB are making such intelligent use of new technology - but I was certainly impressed.
G