RAF could face corporate Manslaughter charge
 

According to the Sun, that font of all knowledge and truth the RAF could face corporate manslaughter charges over the tragic death of Flt Lt Sean Cunningham.

Fairly typical tabloid overstatement Their own article, accurate or not, says

"Flt Lt Cunningham’s death is still being investigated by the Military Aviation Authority.
The inquest is expected later this year.
Ejector seat manufacturer Martin-Baker, based in Uxbridge, West London, has said it is “satisfied” that a fault was not to blame.
The MoD said it was continuing to co-operate with the coroner."

So, no decision on the matter presumably, until the inquest later this year?

Not wishing to go into too much detail, but the stated reason why other similar prosecutions have not proceeded (e.g. Nimrod XV230), is that no individual could be identified (despite evidence to the contrary and the individual being named). Hence, if the decisions are seen to be made by Committee, MoD is on pretty safe ground. It is one reason why things take so long.

In before the outrage/conspiracy theorists pitch up.

Cliffs:

Corporate manslaughter prosecutions in the UK rare as hens teeth

Successful corporate manslaughter prosecutions in the UK rare as gold hens teeth

Individual criminal responsibility almost impossible to prove in most cases.

My concern is just how far it could go with regard to individual prosecutions by the CPS. For example who fitted that bolt that came loose, who closed the panel that opened in flight, who inspected the part that failed or even who authorised the flight.

Worry not, you're protected by law. Not only in the military, but in every form of employment in the UK. Your employers are responsible for your actions...including your mistakes, your incompetence, your negligence, whatever.

The only way an employee can be held responsible is if they committed their error whilst engaged in some form of criminal activity.

All this is a good thing BTW, because it means the buck stops with the right people, ie people that can pay (because they will have insurance) when it comes to settling compensation claims.

Edited...just noticed where you are...kinda works differently there ;)

Quite right to say that ordinary employees are not prosecuted for CORPORATE manslaughter. But they can of course be prosecuted for criminal offences including manslaughter involving negligence or neglect, not merely those involving deliberate criminal conduct. There is also a range of service offences which are relevant.

Just to add, there are exemptions in the corporate manslaughter legislation for some operations-related military activities (IMO not applicable to air display training) but they are not a general exemption of employees from prosecution for criminal offences.

baffman:
Like issuing an illegal order? In that respect all are equal before the Law, VSO's being more equal than others it would appear.

Looked like LMF to me.....

I was out of the country when Eggman's BOI findings were published - but I recall reading from open source that there was a fair amount of criticism of the 22 Gp staff in there. Things like an MAA audit had exposed flaws such as lack of a safety register....which simply hadn't been put right by the time of the accident.

We are now talking about a different tragedy with a different hero sadly no longer with us. However:

Two questions from my cockpit as it were. If the same were to be true here would that warrant a prosecution? In the case of a Hawk T1 (I think) flown by RAFAT would the chap in the dock be AOC 22 Gp - who would be what I would know as the Aircraft Operating Authority...which might have changed since I went abroad to the Duty Holder?

I think that as a community we can't throw up our hands in horror at Nimrod and Sea King AEW airworthiness cases yet recoil from a potential prosecution in other cases where the supervisory chain may have been at fault.

As always - matters will run their course and the truth will out, we hope.

Bloody hell!,
How would we have coped in the RAF with the accident rates in the fifties with all this nonsense? ("Tragedies", "Heros", all round etc.)
Find out the cause of the accident ( if possible), implement the lessons learned and then move on. That is the way in aviation.
Flying is inherently dangerous and man enters the sky at his peril.
Getting written off doesn't automatically make you a "Hero" , just unfortunate in the first analysis.

Haraka:-
I'm not sure that they did cope, witness the accident rate that you quote. How we coped in the 60's was to create a Flight Safety Organisation that was then second to none. As it was gradually refined into the 70's, statistics built up from the reporting system were fed back to ensure that problems were identified and dealt with before they caused avoidable accidents. Thus Force levels were maintained and operational capacity retained. The reason why it worked is because everyone in the chain, from Air Marshal to Airman wanted it to work. Then came the late 80's when certain Air Marshals had more important things on their minds, like finding money to replace that which they had already squandered. Flight Safety, previously a protected species, was seen as a milch cow to that end. Orders were issued to suborn the Regulations but sign them off as complied with. Those who did not comply (mainly engineers) were shipped out and replaced with non-engineers only too willing to obey. Thus started the rot which not only led to airworthiness related fatal accidents but even more tellingly to the loss of professional knowledge required to repair the system when the time came. After Haddon Cave the time was deemed to have arrived. The answer, as so often with Defence, was to invent new organisations with lots of mission statements. Despite these the MAA lacks two vital ingredients; independence from the Operator (the MOD and its Service subsidiaries), and the Professional knowledge to rebuild a system now reduced to rubble.
The Royal Air Force has to face up to this scandal and lance the boil by acting against those VSO's who perpetrated this sabotage. Only then will the need to reform the system and for Regulation and Air Accident Investigation to be separate and independent of both the MOD and of each other be acknowledged. Failing that, avoidable air accidents will carry on needlessly reducing the operational war fighting capacity of the RAF in both lost lives and materiel.

So easy to say, so very very difficult now to achieve...

After reading that Chug I'm glad OASC found me wanting back in '87.

Wise Words Chug.
The issues you raise in detail reflect what seems to be a common concern amongst those who went through that time. My annoyance is at two levels. Firstly and superficially, that of the importation in to the U.K. of American emotional hyperbole, where everybody killed is a "Hero" and seems to have been on nickname terms with so many correspondents; the majority of whom I suspect wouldn't pick them out if alongside in a bus queue.
Watching Blair deliver his fawning and blatantly insincere "People's Princess" monologue was to me the tipping point in that respect. That this mawkishness is now established in the civil population is bad enough, however it seems to have permeated the military as well and that I feel is a corrosion of our values.
These values seem to have been corroded in a different way within the Service , drawing me to my second point which I think is in parallel with yours. The organisational labyrinth now through which potential action must pass is almost self defeating. This again is an importation over the years from a culture outside of the military and reflects the generation of invented job and career creation activity of an increasingly non-productive society ( H&S, HR etc.) in which the tail ends up wagging the dog. Often the only eventual solution is by recourse to law, with another predictable circus being generated. That this is now the arena to which Flight Safety issues are having to be headed I find reprehensible.

I think you miss the point. The problem was not a pre-occupation with Safety Cases, Risk Registers etc, it was the conscious decision to issue orders that they were a waste of money and no longer be funded.

The current fixation, as Chug says, has come about because the same people ran down that part of the MoD which hitherto had quietly got on with this vital task. It is now high profile, and that attracts people who see a quick promotion. Precisely the wrong type when many years practical experience is a fundamental requirement. One only has to read the MAA documentation to see this gross inexperience.



One. The one that told the RAF Chief Engineer and Chief of the Air Staff that the aforesaid order was already having a detrimental effect. Every other inquiry/review/report, such as Haddon-Cave, has simply repeated those conclusions, far too long after the event. The important audit is the one which foresaw all the problems in infinite detail.

Wise words Chug. I always reckoned that if the MAA was really required, and that is entirely debatable, then it should have been born as a brother to the CAA not the spawn of the MOD. Thus giving it some level of demonstrable independence. Clearly there would have to have been some military aviation experience incorporated but hey ho.

Haraka,

Dreadfully sorry if my use of the words hero and tragedy upsets you. I have even taken the time to look both up and I'm not sure I'm wrong.

Back to the topic.

With you Orca. I was once a trained killer. Now I'm a retired hero.

About the Audit thing...

It doesn't matter how many audits you have or where they originate from or even who is on them if the organisation being audited doesn't learn from or even acknowledge the result.

Ignorance of audit results is rife in almost all organisations but in my experience it really comes to the fore in military organisations. Chug and Tuc's common sense posts are testament to military (MOD's) rejection of evidential issues.

A Safety Case, and all of the documentation on which it is built (not least of which is the Hazard Log) is absolutely essential for anything as complex as an aircraft, a train, a signalling system, or anything else that isn't trivial. It has to take into account people, procedures, and equipment. It's not something you should ever look to cut from your budget.

I worked at Boscombe Down as a safety engineer for a few years in the nineties...we made our recommendations, based on solid evidence, and they were often ignored by MoD on the basis of cost or simply because they thought they knew better. I'm still working as a safety engineer (although no longer associated with military aviation) and it's still all too often an uphill task to get the holders of the purse strings to listen. Thankfully, we are now backed up with legislation and international standards (the principles of which are readily applicable to military aviation) so not every day involves a flagellated deceased equine...