Well, if other public services are to be used as a template, given that an old schoolfriend of mine was found guilty at a Navy Courts Martial of being a significant contributory factor into a Perisher student driving a nuclear submarine into the seabed causing £5M worth of damage - he ended up driving a desk for 4-5 years at MOD before leaving the service as a Commodore, last tour of duty being Commander British Forces Gibraltar, and the other famous case of a certain Metropolitan Police Gold Commander's loss of control resulting in a Brazilian electrician being turned into swiss cheese by the men in black and later ending up as Commissioner, I think we can safely say this errant pilot's path to CAS is assured.

Especially if he's done the Common Purpose course.:E

Jabba-surely this chap cant be CAS? He doesn't drive anything pointy enough....

Treble one,

I don't consider a Tornado GR1/4 as a "pointy" thing, its just a mud mover.

Any way, he could not be CAS as be has too much flying experience! Even be much of it gained while taking photographs, and not seated correctly as PIC of an aircraft.

I was so pleased to hear that RAF pilots are able to persuit their hobbies whilst earning the "Queens Shilling".

That was my response to your post:-
What I had actually said was:-
I didn't claim that it was all down to a design fault, as you well know. Very few accidents are down to any one thing, hence the Swiss Cheese model. The defendant pleaded guilty to negligence and was sentenced accordingly, but clearly there was a pinch point between his armrest and his Voyager side stick for his negligently placed camera to be trapped in, otherwise the very serious accident that followed would not have occurred! As I and another poster have pointed out, the same pinch point could trap anything else placed there.

It was you who stated that there is an identical pinch point on other airbus aircraft. If that is the case then common sense would suggest that some form of mitigation be introduced on all such common types. My suggestion of a touch sensitive pad on the end of the armrest was only one of any number of possible common sense solutions. Restricting the depth to which the arm rest can be lowered is another. I remain convinced that this issue has been considered and mitigation sought, if not by the RAF then by others. I said previously that I would be greatly surprised if that were not case, only to have a response from itsnotthatbloodyhard:-
Very amusing, but aviation notoriously has no sense of humour. This accident can happen again. The whole point about Flight Safety is to prevent a recurrence, or don't we do that any more?

Maybe more awareness is needed! Why place your camera (if really required!!) in this position! Surely we must know our aircraft and any "limitations" (for want of a better word) that apply to them? Maybe I am being old-fashioned but, in my opinion (and only mine!), this incident should never have occured!

Bill

Bill, absolutely agree that it should never have happened, but it did, and it was an accident rather than an incident. Of course the camera shouldn't have been there but in a safe stowage, which I presume to be the pilot's nav bag. Loose articles, like FOD, are as old as aviation itself and it is a constant battle to contain both. Part of that battle is to protect the more vulnerable areas that they can effect. We could have lost this aircraft and all who were onboard. As it is some were injured, a few very seriously. We owe it to them to ensure that it never happens again. If the DS solution is simply harsh treatment then memories of that soon fade and the gremlins are ready to strike again. So something more permanent is required, or history will repeat itself, or God forbid even worse!

We were both around when Flight Safety was once a central pillar of the Royal Air Force. Its purpose was to avoid avoidable accidents, just like this one, principally by trying to avoid them in the first place, or failing that by making sure that everything be done to try to avoid a repeat. By reducing the number of accidents you preserve both aircraft and aircrew, and hence Air Power. Both men and machines were far more plentiful in our time, though it was just as wasteful to lose either of them unnecessarily. It seems that simple common sense attitude has changed somewhat and not for the best. If that is old fashioned then that makes two of us!

Quite so! A technological 'solution' is wholly unnecessary. However a clearly marked 'sterile area' adjacent to the side stick, within which nothing may be placed, would perhaps be a cheap enhancement?

intbh:-
Well it occurred to one person that we know of and, given the squillions of flight hours the design has been exposed to claimed by ShotOne, it's a pound to a penny that it's occurred to others as well. With the 10cm pinch point that you claim is practically unchangeable then education is an obvious starting point, I agree.

I would also back that up by a visual reminder that the sidestick shelf is a no-no area to place absolutely anything on. The international conventionally recognised way of indicating that is by black and yellow hachured markings. Whether Airbus would be prepared to issue such a recommendation to all A330 and A320 family operators and thus draw attention to this Achilles heel in its design is a matter of conjecture, but the UK regulators (ie CAA and MAA) should certainly consider it, don't you agree?

Ah, just been pipped at the post by Beagle, with whom I find I am in violent agreement.

INTBH, your PPRuNe ID is very appropriate for the harmony that Beagle, yourself, and I seem to have reached. It wasn't so bloody hard after all, was it? :ok:

That was all I was seeking in my previous posts, a workable mitigation that would serve to help avoid a repetition of this avoidable accident.

Yes, TN, it was an accident and not an incident, you are right. I certainly hold those who are responsible for UK Military Air Safety as responsible for the lack of it, who else?

The very basis of your post, that the accident could not happen, either then or in the future, were it not for one particular individual is flawed. It would seem to be the basis for the CM sentence too, ie remove that man from the Service and the accident by definition cannot recur. That theory is flawed too. That is why we need to look beyond this man and his negligence. That is why some form of preventative action is needed, such as the suggestion in the preceding posts. Classic Flight Safety!

Without wanting to reignite any previous discussions, I'd like to put up a thought for consideration:
The report describes how a visit to the flightdeck by a purser prompted the 'storage' of the camera. That to me indicates a distraction, and in such cases people's minds often revert to ingrained behaviour. If you've spent many hours on flightdecks where the controls are positioned front and centre, the area next to your seat has for many years been a safe area to quickly store whatever needs storing. The action of putting down the camera may well have been one of those automatic actions that your mind may not fully remember afterwards. Yes, as flight crew we should all be very aware of all the things that happen on our flight decks, but still, I'm sure all of us have examples like this in our experience where at least part of the decision was made by our built-in autopilot. It is very sad that it turned out the way it did, but I'm just saying that at the time, the action of that one person was not something that occurred to him as a good idea, but something that, for the automatic part of his brain, appeared as a logical and sensible thing to do. And the rational part of his brain that should have screamed was distracted by something else.
I agree too by the way: designating that area as a 'sterile area' with some sort of visual reminder would be a good idea. For many it may not appear to be necessary, but if we can prevent just one more accident like this, the lesson will have been useful.

I really did not wish to join in this debate, but...
I have taken all sorts of stuff into a cockpit, and thankfully never jammed anything. The sterile area painting is an obvious good idea.
I do not know the pilot. I have not followed the CM proceedings, or the verdicts. I am 'old school'. It was a cock-up!
As Captain, or indeed as Co, if I was in control I was never in a position where I needed to move the seat to safely fly the aircraft manually.
Loss of pension etc & dismissed the service is harsh, but that is what I would have expected.
Ray