A case being brought in the French criminal court about the 1992 Air Inter Airbus A320 crash at Strasbourg has a slightly surreal air to those who observe it from a distance.

When the court sits to hear the case in May it will be judging an event that took place more than 14 years ago and for which the accident report was filed 12 years ago. One of the parties indicted represents the aircraft manufacturer, even though at the time of the accident the law regarding corporate criminal liability did not exist in its present form, and the airline no longer exists – in name anyway.

This judicial procedure is standard in


The 14 years of hindsight that the court has is a fearful weapon

France, both in that issues arising from fatal air accidents are always tested in the French courts, and in the protracted period it has taken for the system to bring this case to court. In most countries there is an approximately equivalent legal procedure, but in some it is not inevitable that the issues surrounding a fatal accident will be brought to a criminal court – they are often settled in a civil or coroner’s court instead.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation, pilots’ associations and the Flight Safety Foundation have been campaigning for years to have it made a legal standard in all countries that the technical accident investigations conducted to determine what happened and prevent future occurrences should not be hampered by simultaneous judicial investigations that have first call on anything considered to be potential evidence. Also criticised by the same agencies is the practice of bringing immediate criminal prosecutions against parties involved in an accident before there is any evidence to justify doing so.
But although France is one of the countries that operates simultaneous judicial evidence gathering, the court case discussed here is not in one of those condemned categories: the French technical investigators reached their conclusions about this accident 12 years ago.

The court case in May will simply determine whether, under French law, any party to the accident is culpable of negligence.
The parties involved include Bernard Ziegler, Airbus’s chief engineer during the development of the A320 and at the time of
the accident. Airbus is accused of poor cockpit ergonomic design in one respect that may have had a bearing on the crew’s tactical errors during the descent toward Strasbourg.

Also indicted are the air traffic controller involved, two directors at French civil aviation authority DGAC and the Air Inter chief executive and operations director. If the pilots had survived they would also have been indicted. There will always be ironies surrounding the issues considered by a court like this. Ziegler was the man who, if he had had his way, would have made the A300 series – Airbus’s first product – fly-by-wire and flight envelope protected. He believed it would make aircraft safer. His philosophy on automation is exemplified by his belief that, if an action is made compulsory for pilots
in the flight operations manual – like acting on the GPWS “pull-up” alert – the function should be automated. Airbus is continuing that tradition by proposing that an airborne collision avoidance system resolution advisory should be flown automatically if the aircraft is in autopilot. If this function had been active in both the aircraft that collided over Uberlingen,
southern Germany in July 2002 there would have been no collision – unless one of the pilots had been able to override it, just as he countermanded the advisory on that day.

If courts were regularly to make rulings that penalise companies for introducing technology intended to improve safety, they could have a stifling effect on innovation. The A320 was a relatively new in-service aircraft at the time of the accident, and the 14 years of hindsight that the court has is a fearful weapon.

Another verdict the world awaits with interest is that of the Greek investigation into the August 2005 Helios Airways Boeing
737-300 accident. The only recent hints from the investigator as to the nature of some of the findings is that “systemic” faults made the pilots’ errors more likely to occur. The investigator has praised the Hellenic and Cypriot judiciaries for letting him get on with the investigation unimpeded, but it sounds as if, when he hands over the report, the courts in
both countries will arraign a number of parties. It is to be hoped that the courts will use wisdom as well as the law in bringing their judgments on an industry as complex as aviation.

 

 

Source: Flight International

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