Good grief!

Meanwhile, in the other seat/on the cockpit roof ...

BEagle,
Your loyalty to this man does you credit, he should be proud to have you as a friend.

Your initial comments were to throw doubt on the integrity of the aircraft and defend the man from any accusation.

The man has admitted negligence and the aircraft has been shown to have had no fault.

I/We have been monitoring the case and CM daily.

The 'thug' involved in the SI is for the 'high jump', indeed, he is likely to create a new record for the 'high jump'.

Interesting times ahead.

Did my BFTS with Andy, I had no doubt about his integrity and from personal experience know what it feels like to have made a genuine mistake and nearly kill myself and someone else.

Very glad that it worked out this way.

Ivor

beardy, thanks. However, there were quite a few concerns about the integrity of the Voyager-modified A330 at the time, given some of the reported issues. Hence my reasoning that an autoflight system bug could perhaps have been the cause of the unplanned descent.

Given the MoD's statement concerning the subsequent 'training and procedures' amendments, it wouldn't take a terribly bright lawyer to probe into the question of whether 'negligence' or basic 'ignorance' was the issue - 'ignorance' as in the true meaning of the word: 'lack of knowledge'.

So a lawyer might choose to ask:

What training, theoretical and practical, was given to Voyager pilots?
Who gave this training - and what formal qualifications did they hold?
How often were Abnormal Procedures involving s/s priority or jammed s/s practised in the simulator - and what formal qualifications were held by the assessor?

Your loyalty to this man does you credit, he should be proud to have you as a friend. - Beardy

Thoroughly agree - well played, BEagle:ok:, irrespective of any other aspect of this saga, and thankfully the old adage, "Justice delayed is justice denied" did not apply - eventually. That said, I cannot be the only person who finds it incredible - rather than "incredulous"! - that it has taken three whole years to reach this point....:ugh

Jack

It must have been a very stressful time. i hope Andy will soon be back in the left hand seat.

I fully agree with BEagle, a verdict that does justice to Andy as a man, pilot and officer. I hope he can get back in the left seat soon and put this miserable episode behind him.

I still can't fathom out why you would do this:

It just doesn't seem to make sense as it must have likely been a deliberate act to delete them? Also, if the damage to the camera was made when it became free during the bunt then surely the aircraft would have not needed the co-pilot's side stick to recover it? Otherwise, if it remained in place, when the aircraft recovered and things went back to normal you would most likely see a camera wedged in the controls? Unless the Captain admitted that he knew that his camera had become jammed in the controls and that he deliberately hid this fact (which he didn't) then there would unlikely be enough proof to prove that he had intended to decieve. I can only guess this is where the deliberations were and why they delivered a not guilty verdict - no burden of proof and the presumption of innocence is a basic right of Law. They delivered that verdict and so that is that, unless someone appeals (very unlikely).

Others have said they know the Captain and say what a good chap he is. I'm sure he is, but I also know the much maligned inquiry interviewer allegedly threatening physical harm - I can't believe he would say this and that would be completely out of character from what I know of him (unless it was outrageously badly-timed banter!!). So where does that leave the debate when it is effectively one word against the other unless there is a full admission of saying it with intent?

As for trying to blame the training and SOPs - purlease.... I come back to Occam's Razor on this. If you take bits of kit into the cockpit and it causes an issue, then you must at least accept some culpability. Otherwise, where does it end? "When my trumpet got caught in the throttle quadrant no one had ever given me any training on how to deal with it...No one told me not to take brass band instruments into the cockpit...etc..." :ugh:

To be fair on the deleted photos topic. My (very) similar camera is set to automatically delete the photos on the SD card as soon as they're uploaded onto my computer.
Which I think was also mentioned at the CM.

No DSLRs have this setting built in. They would have to be deleted, I suspect the investigators used recovery software to check this..

Reminds me of the RMT's response after the Croydon tram crash when it was revealed that the driver had been doing 40mph in a 12mph zone. Rather than admitting the blame of the driver, the RMT blamed the operators for not having the proper systems in place to prevent the driver from speeding.

fabs, quite so.

It is normal practice for most amateur photographers to download images onto a PC for editing/tweaking and to keep the camera SD card more or less empty.

Quite why the SI would make such an issue over something so trivial is difficult to comprehend.

I think I said many pages ago that it was for the Courts Martial to decide the outcome not the barrack room lawyers on here - as the outcome has now been established a lot of people on here should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Not sure I follow your logic here MOSTAFA. Would you have been thoroughly ashamed of yourself if the CM had found the other way?

But to confirm - he also plead guilty to the 4th charge?

Hmmm. Speaking as an ex TG1 with 12 years experience, where would I have ended up had I left a loose article on the flight deck that had caused such an incident? Probably hung out to dry.

Any articles not necessary for the flight should not be allowed on the flight deck.

Thanks, that explains that for me. I think of my iPhone where I haven't deleted photos from over 5 years ago...:ok:

I'm pretty sure it was reasoning like this that the case should never have gone to CM as it almost impossible to prove guilt without a confession. I think of other cases that seem far more 'water-tight' like the OJ Simpson trial and they ended in 'not guilty' verdicts. So quite what the military hoped to get by pursuing what was originally an error, covered up or not, with such voracity seems strange to me.

Hopefully we will all learn from this?

Doesn't need to be a camera feature - often it's done from the computer end as part of the software performing the download...