Sorry @gallois,
while I agree to your content I can’t see why you accuse me of acting as judge.
The onyl thing I was saying is that obviously the Italian Judge decided the FI was PIC (and I was the one to write that we do not even have sufficient Information to question this ruling) and that not using the Air 2 Air frequency in my eyes would indeed be gross negligence.
Al the question you ask are valid – and the only thing I’m fighting against here is the attitude some pilot communities have that “because a pilot was sentenced for something it must be a scandal, the judge has no idea what he is doing, etc.”.
From all the Information we have (including the preliminary report, etc.) it is not unplausible, that the FI actually was PIC and that he did demonstrate significant deficits in good airmanship. Therefore there is no material evidence whatsoever to critizie what the judge has ruled.
Malibuflyer wrote:
The equivalent of this accident in road traffic would be a driver that turns off headlights at night because it doesn’t have a valid MOT (or TüV or whatever technical check document is required) and doesn’t want someone to see it.
Sure, happy to go with that. But in this case, the missing MOT (assuming the car was roadworthy) also has no bearing on whether he is found guilty of negligent manslaughter or not; it all hinges on driving without the headlights on.
Maybe I sound like a broken record – my bugbear is that very quickly, discussions about accidents revolve about the validity of snippets of paper or the sense of the requirement for them, rather than the causes and how it can be avoided.
The elephant in the room here is two aircraft ended up colliding because they did not know about each other, both modern mechanisms (ADS-B, Flarm etc) and ancient ones (radio) were not used to prevent them. And that is what needs to change. Flight plans have nothing to do with that.
And the judge may well be right – this is not an acceptable risk, we should not fly that way; he just convicted the wrong people…
Malibuflyer, your position really does seem to be guitly until proven innocent. I would say that we don’t know all the details, but I wouldn’t make the massive leap to assume that the italian judge certainly did no who was PIC.
Surely you would want to see material evidence to show that the judge had made the correct ruling, rather than making the assumption and having to prove he got it wrong.
@Cobalt:
Couldn’t agree more with one Little “but”:
At least I don’t have sufficent information to positively say it was “the wrong people”. Could be the wrong, could be the right people. And as the Judge obviously has much more information I have no basis of questioning his ruling.
Off_Field wrote:
Malibuflyer, your position really does seem to be guitly until proven innocent
Sorry, NO! The FI is already “proven guilty” by a judge! My position is that we need to have enough trust in the legal system – even the Italien one – that if in doubt the System does the right thing.
Before a court ruling there obviously is the rule of doubt – but after a court ruling there needs to be material evidence that the judg/Jury/whoever was completely wrong.
I don’t think that it is a “massive leap” to assume that a judge actually did his job.
Malibuflyer wrote:
I don’t think that it is a “massive leap” to assume that a judge actually did his job.
One thing to consider is that it is not the purpose of the legal system to improve flight safety (or actually improve anything). It is to find people guilty (or not) of breaking the law, how silly and counterproductive the law may be.
Malibuflyer wrote:
I don’t think that it is a “massive leap” to assume that a judge actually did his job.
would you also think it was not a massive leap to assume a FI PIC would do his job?
Silvaire,
I hope you never get into a civil suit in the US, you’d be surprised by the looks of it how much all such things play into a decision process about how a verdict is reached and damages calculated and all that.
The goal of the prosecution is always, criminal or civil, to prove the defendant guilty of the actual crime he has comitted. In this case, the Italian justice determines he has comitted manslaughter based on the facts they had. Apart from the very fact that the plane they determined to be under his command crashed into a correctly flying helicopter, which is the actual “crime”, they tried show the pilot to be someone who does not care about regulations and who in full knowledge of the fact that he broke a known regulation decided not to announce his presence on the radio to cover up the fact that he had willingly entered an area he was not supposed to be without a flight plan.
So he broke the law by entering without a flightplan on purpose. He tried to cover up that fact by not using his radio to announce his presence, which is apparently something that others from that club did as well, you may call it a conspiracy if you like. And as a consequence, he denied the helicopter crew vital information which might have averted a crash which killed a large number of people.
How not to reach this verdict? Do you really think that in the US someone flying into say LAX B airspace and taking out an airliner in the process would be aquitted? Knowin the US, I believe someone like that would probably end up in prison for the rest of his life, not to speak of the civil damages.
Yes, italian courts are known to be harsh, but maybe that is what is needed to stop such behaviour. Be sure that as a consequence, even if a higher court reduces the sentence, every pilot in Europe now is brutally aware that Italy requires a flight plan and will react harshly if you kill people in your own ignorance or with wilful disregard to existing law. I am very sorry, I do not see much wrong with that.
I fully stand behind the principle of Just Culture and all that, but as we said before in similar cases, as soon as intent or criminal negligence is involved, that game is up and the gloves come off.
Off_Field wrote:
would you also think it was not a massive leap to assume a FI PIC would do his job?
Before the court ruling it would have been the natural assumption.
After the court ruling, it would be a massive “I know much less than the Judge but I still know better” type of leap to still assume that the FI PIC did his Job correctly and dilligently.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I hope you never get into a civil suit in the US, you’d be surprised by the looks of it how much all such things play into a decision process about how a verdict is reached and damages calculated and all that.
This is not a civil suit. As I mentioned, I believe it should be.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Do you really think that in the US someone flying into say LAX B airspace and taking out an airliner in the process would be aquitted?
I’m fairly certain when that actually happened there were no criminal charges against anybody. The major effect was changes in the airspace structure that have so far prevented recurrence. That said, it’s a compete red herring because the otherwise open French/Italian national border in this case played no role in ATC traffic separation. There was no applicable ATC in the airspace nor apparently any law that required the pilot to make blind calls. See and avoid is the applicable aeronautical law, and both pilots were required to do it.
In this situation, the law contributed to a fatal accident by creating a legal (not ATC) situation in which the pilot could not as a practical matter comply, and as a result an entire culture has been created over decades which ignores it. Meanwhile the reaction of the government is to bear down harder in a cartoonish manner instead of assessing the small fine which would be appropriate, and then working productively with the French to eliminate a law which is clearly silly, and which has contributed to an accident.
All that aside, I think it’s worth asking whether there is any reason other than preserving its own power that the Italians would be so obsessed with requiring a flight plan for a little wooden plane to cross the French border. One would think that encouraging cross border trade would be their goal. I have ridden a motorcycle probably a hundred times across that open border, spent lots of money in Italy after doing so, and nobody seemed to object!
Silvaire wrote:
This is not a civil suit.
Well, the judge also ordered 5.12 mio damages to be paid.
Silvaire wrote:
I’m fairly certain when that actually happened there were no criminal charges against anybody.
Out of a practical reason I reckon. The pilot did not survive.
Silvaire wrote:
In this situation, the law contributed to a fatal accident by creating a legal (not ATC) situation in which the pilot could not as a practical matter comply,
Why? It is a story of 2 minutes and a smartphone to file a flightplan. And even more so, it should be 2nd nature to use air to air coms in these areas.
What if a pilot in the US overflew a known to him aerodrome where an unicom is active intentionally without radio and provoked an accident this way? I would be very surprised if in such a case the US law would not go after him.
Whenever you stand in front of a court ALL factors in an accident or incident or crime will be held against you. If from the outset you showed an attitude where you deliberately and intentionally ignore regulation you are well aware of and then decide to cover up that failure to comply with regulation by another non-compliance to sensible avoidance of an accident, I am almost sure that the US legal system would come down even harder on you there than in italy.
It is not the question here whether a regulation makes sense or not. Canada and the US are also very close but have you tried to fly from Canada to the US without a flight plan and land there and re-depart? Well, that is the requirement the Italians have to everyone using an airplane and they are not the only ones. Many countries or even airports require flight plans to be filed and if you don’t, then you carry the consequences. if you cause an accident by i.e. not filing a flight plan and then switching off your transponder (illegal too) and create an accident, what do you expect? The presidential medal of freedom?
