Five people are currently on trial in France following the crash of an Air France Concorde shortly after takeoff in 2000. Is this trial in anyone's interests?

The five are not accused of colluding together to cause the accident, but each is separately accused of involuntary manslaughter. This charge implies that the prosecution believes there is sufficient evidence to show that each separately acted with such recklessness as to endanger the aircraft.

This prosecution is driven by emotions rather than logic. Far from being in anyone's interests, it is actually detrimental to flight safety. Why would anyone cooperate with a future safety investigation, or volunteer to keep or make available information, if it might be used to prosecute and imprison them?

So who gains from a prosecution? Do the victims' family and loved ones? I suspect that the most important thing for them is a complete understanding of what happened and evidence of changes to prevent it reoccurring, thus ensuring that any tragic deaths are not repeated. So is a prosecution, such as the one on France, going to reduce or increase the likelihood of there being further victims of tragic accidents in the future?

ECA's position is clear and simple. Many experts acting together and away from the pressures of politics have developed a 'state of the art' process for the investigation of accidents and incidents. It puts the prevention of future accidents as its highest aim. This process is known as Annex 13 to the ICAO convention and ECA believes a very good case has to be made before regulators deviate from its provisions.

The EU Commission is proposing a revision of the accident investigation directive and one of ECA's primary concerns is that the first draft has many unexplained deviations from ICAO Annex 13. The Council and Parliament should take sufficient time to correct this error and ensure that we have the best chance of learning from any future air accident.

To do anything else risks condemning further passengers and crews to an unnecessary and untimely death!