Sorry about the delay. I had to ring up another pilot I met in court to check on a few things.
More detail.
Before the jury came in the CAA lawyer told the judge he wanted the jury to be given the AAIB report but the defence objected. Flying Lawyer said the CAA didn't give any advance warning they were going to try to use the report, and anyway an AAIB report can't just be given to a jury. They had two experts each who'd given opinions and the prosecution shouldn't be allowed to slip in extra stuff unless they brought the investigators to court to be questioned. The whole point of the AAIB is to find out what went wrong so everyone can learn from it and improve flight safety, not to blame people. If an investigator or anyone else is worried what they say may be used in a criminal case the system wouldn't work and flight safety would suffer.
The judge said he knew about accident investigations from his time in the Navy and agreed with Flying Lawyer. He said there wasn't to be any mention of the AAIB report.
The case started off well for the CAA and it looked like the pilot had no chance but as the case went on Flying Lawyer was doing a lot of damage to the prosecution witnesses. They came across well at first but when he questioned them he was catching them out.
Some examples from 4 days not in order.
He got the CFI to agree tanks should be filled every 3-4 flights to reset to a known quantity and any more than that was dangerous because of errors accumalating. He then showed they hadn't been filled for 14 flights before the pilot hired the Seneca.
And worse, when it was filled the wrong figure was put in the Tech Log so everyone after had 5 USG less than they thought.
The CFI agreed it's important Tech Logs are accurate and checked for errors but there were a whole list of errors nobody picked up.
The CAA had been going on about how official the Flying Order book was and how serious it was not to comply with it but the FO book said tanks should be filled after the last flight of the day and the CFI told people not to do that and the pilot had been told off for filling his tanks for his trips to Sheffield.
The CAA wanted to show nothing wrong with the engines to caused excessive fuel consumption so they got the engineer who adjusted the fuel flow a few days before the crash. He said he did lots of high power runs and the engines were perfect . Another shot in the foot! There was nothing in the Tech Log to show the fuel he used doing the engine runs.
The CAA expert went on about visual inspection of the tanks but then agreed visual checks are useless on a Seneca unless the tanks are over half to three quarters full you can't see any fuel.
He started off saying pilots should go through the Tech Log to see if there were any fuel calculation errors by other pilots but the CAA hadn't checked how many pages the club left in the working Tech Log file so he didn't even know how far back the pilot could check.
So he changed his tune and said a pilot should check the previous entry to see if there was anything to put him on warning the Tech Log figure was wrong. Flying Lawyer asked him to examine the previous entry (4 long sectors) and say if there was anything to put him on warning. He said there weren't. FL then pointed out there were and he had to admit if he as an expert couldn't spot the errors it was a bit much to expect a PPL to spot them.
He then admitted it was reasonable for a pilot to assume the figure shown in the Tech Log for fuel remaining was accurate within small margins for error and idn't have much option unless he filled the tanks which this pilot had been told not to do. He agreed the errors in this Tech Log were way outside what was acceptable and admitted there was no way any pilot could be expected to allow for such big errors.
This all took a very long time because the CAA expert wouldn't answer a straight question if it helped the defence.
The build-up is important because by the time Captain Lowe the first defence expert gave evidence the CAA's case was already beginning to look shaky.
The prosecutor was getting nowhere with Lowe and tried to make out hee wasn't answering simple questions yes or no, but Lowe said the questions were so wide you couldn't give a yes or no answer. That was true. He was trying to patronise Lowe - big mistake! Lowe is a very clever man, very experienced and everyone could see he was just being precise.
Lowe said the defence experts had been asked to analyse the Tech Logs and he calculated the amount of fuel remaining when the pilot hired was 21 USG. The Tech Log said 30 USG.
The CAA expert hadn't even done this calculation but the prosecutor said Lowe's opinion was wrong and asked him if he'd read the AAIB report. We thought this was odd because of what the judge said about the AAIB report and the lawyer taking notes near us was shaking his head.
We saw Flying Lawyer leaning across whispering something to the prosecutor. He didn't reply and asked Lowe a second time if he'd read the AAIB report. FL got up and asked the judge if he could speak to the prosecutor again. We thought he'd back off but he turned to Lowe and asked him if the AAIB agreed with his opinion about the fuel. The lawyer next to us almost fell off his seat!
Mr Owen stood up and said he needed to speak to the judge about a point of law. The judge said he knew what it was and sent the jury to their room. Mr Owen said what the prosecutor did was deliberate not innocent because he reminded him twice what the judge said about not mentioning the AAIB report. You could see it was a foul and the judge looked annoyed.
What was the rubbish the prosecutor came out with?
He said he hadn't done anything wrong because he never actually said what was in the report.
The judge wasn't having it. He said jurors aren't stupid and they'd realise the AAIB must have come to a different conclusion to Lowe or the prosecutor wouldn't have asked the question. It was unfair tactics. I've already said what happened next in my first post.
In what way were the CAA unfair?
Two main ways.
One - Trying to get the pilot convicted on emotion.
When the prosecutor told the jury at the beginning what the CAA's case was you had to be there to see how unfair it was. He said the pilot didn't have a defence, his lawyers would try to "blind them with science" and went on and on and on about how children could have been killed, trying to make the jury prejudiced against the pilot. All that emotional stuff in the Daily Mail. There was a funny moment when Flying Lawyer in a stage whisper said he hasn't mentioned children for 5 minutes. It was so obvious what the prosecutor was trying to do and the jury all grinned.
The CAA brought the house-owner to say how upset they all were and was even getting her to point out her children's toys in the garden. That's my 5 year old's tricycle, that's my 6 year old's ball etc. When he'd finished, Flying Lawyer got up and said he didn't ask for the lady to be brought to court her statement could have been read to the jury. He said the CAA had obviously brought her for their own ulterior reasons. The judge ticked FL off for making a comment, but then said you can leave that to me! The judge wasn't stupid. Everyone could see what the prosecutor was up to.
Two - Making out anything less than perfect airmanship meant the pilot was guilty of negligence.
It looked like the judge was falling for it until Flying Lawyer got up and said what the jury had to decide wasn't whether the pilot could have made a better job of it but whether his flight planning was "below the standard it was reasonable to expect from a competent and prudent pilot". (I wrote that bit down.) And did his conversion mistake endanger the a/c and people. The judge agreed. We didn't understand the last bit at the time because we thought if the pilot made a mistake and ran out of fuel that must be endangering but when all the stuff about the Tech Log came out you could see the pilot error cost him 6 USG but he was another 9 USG short because of other people's mistakes and the club not filling the tanks regularly.
I said before we thought the jury wouldn't convict him when the Tech Log was so bad and other people were negligent and they weren't prosecuted.
I'm not saying we didn't think he was negligent but it was up to the CAA to prove he was guilty and Mr Owen's job was to get him off and he did.
The CAA ended up with egg all over their faces and they only threw in the towel so they didn't have to pay the expense of the wasted trial.
The pilot was lucky but he'll never fly without full tanks again that's for sure so he's learnt a lesson.
Maybe the prosecutor learnt a few lessons as well.
There's no point in asking me any more questions, that's everything I can remember.
Edited to say the young lawyer taking notes was very helpful and he made it much more interesting for us. I didn't find out his name but if any of the legal eagles on Prune know him please thank him.