criminal negligence
 

Hiya,
I have been given a project at Uni regarding criminal negligence. (Its engineering btw). I have to research and report on a case of criminal negligence within the aerospace industry, and I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction. I need to find a case were through poor or laxidasical engineering or maintainence an incident arose which resulted in the person/s or company being prosecuted. I was thinking of something like the aeroperu 757, or valujet disaster but with a UK firm/person. I would need to focus on the law side of the case rather than the technical (thats a different assignment, aloha 243) :hmm:
Anyway, if anyone knows of such a case, can you tell me about it and then I can research the criminal proceedings.
Sorry I know its not the most upbeat of posts but I don't choose the tasks!!!!
Thanks
Richard.

rich49...."I was thinking of something like the Aero Peru 757."

I think that you must first define "criminal" intent, otherwise you are implying that the cleaner(s) intentionally had left masking tape affixed over the external static ports (after washing the fuselage) which subsequently had caused erroneous airspeed and altitude indications. :ouch:

In my judgement that would not be criminal negligence but only compound negligence at the most.

I can't recall a sucessfully prosecuted case of criminal negligence in transport aviation but await somebody to list some in their answers

Very close to this activity would be, in my opinion, was the actions of a few of the Alaska Airlines maintenance folks in Oakland, with regard to the swan dive of the MD80 off Pt.Mugu some time ago.
However, don't believe that it will come to this, as it appears to have all been swept under the table.

Try http://ethics.tamu.edu/ you'll find several case studies that suit your needs. (If you find mention of me in there, I don't want to know.)

G

You may be interested in the G-OBMM incident, some aspects of the aftermath of which are described by Franklin.

It might be worth locating a copy of James Reason’s book “Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents”, which provides an authoritive overview of some of the issues behind Accidents, and quite a few examples which are aviation related.

One of the Chapters is titled “Maintenance can seriously Damage your system”

Hey guys thanks a lot for that info, thats all just what I needed. I'll look into it all!
Cheers.
Richard

What about the ValueJet (ValuJet?) O2 cannister related fire & subsequent crash into a Florida swamp? Would that be appropriate?

Tinstaafl, thanks. Yes I did look into the valujet a while back (funnily enough, because I saw a film based on it), but I wasn't sure if sabretech were prosecuted? BM was in the UK, and I think that UK law may be more appropriate. Thanks for all the suggestions though guys!