As others had previously mentioned it would be nice now if CVR's can be fitted to these smaller type of aircrafts so at least there can be less specalation when an accident like this occurs.
I have to admit, not infering that LEA adopt this type of procedure, but I have never understood this putting tech items in emails. I have witnessed in several companies this practice and wonder why a Captain would do this. The Captain would say, well I'm doing this to help the company out, yeah that might be true, but what about the next crew who take it over - are they full aware of all defects, and what happens if they arent happy to fly plane, now there the bad guys if they tech it, and then the list of items gets longer. Also what is the position if you hand over aircraft with known defects and do not tech it - could you as previous crew be partly responsible if the next crew have an accident. In a perfect world items should be put in tech log, and if they can be defered, then defer items. This then gives operation a chance to plan for said maintenace - job done. However we are rarely in the perfect world and this is where we need good judgement.