Peter wrote:
on suspicion of manslaughter by an unlawful act
Now that is an interesting charge. So many vagaries…..FAA reg, CAA Airspace/Jurisdiction, Pilot qualifications, night flight, owner responsibility – NO COMMENT, is the default?
The UK always needs a whipping boy, a fall guy, aka the whistleblower debacle where the whistleblower is always the one who gets blown up, whilst the true perps are given multi million pound payouts…‘’to leave’’ to collect the golden pension. All so wonderfully British. Dear God
Like the Shoreham Hunter pilot (who few expected to get acquitted, but he got good lawyers) there is no way they will get this guy for manslaughter. It will end up yet another botched CAA prosecution which will fail and trigger yet another internal review leading to heads rolling, recriminations, aggressive personalities rising through the ranks, more bizzare policy changes and ar*se covering in other areas.
I am not sure what one can comment on. We have already discussed Ibbotson and his apparent lack of required licensing, but that’s OK because he can’t sue. Even the Mail is being quite careful.
How do these prosecutions work? Is it the CPS that does the prosecuting, or the CAA? (AIUI the CAA normally prosecutes in aviation cases, but I could be wrong).
I’d expect manslaughter is not within the CAA’s remit to prosecute. IMHO all they can do is transmit their suspicion to CPS (or Police?). But if the reason for manslaughter is heavily aviation-regulation-related, the CPS would rely on the CAA to understand, and to explain to the judge and jury, why/how there was criminal negligence or unlawful act leading to death without intent of killing. (I imagine the charge is involuntary manslaughter, not voluntary manslaughter).
I wonder where (if the case proceeds) it will leave fbo’s renting to people whose licensing minutiae depends on fantastically convoluted rules such that almost no-one is capable of understanding them? It’s been argued that 50% of PPLs are technically invalid due to the opacity of the rules.
If it succeeds, which I hugely doubt under this charge, it may well have an effect that anyone renting will be checking the renter’s paperwork before every rent, rather than every once in x months or years.
This has often been an issue in syndicates where a member could fly illegally for ages, perhaps unknowingly, because inspecting paperwork is seen as not very friendly.
Normally, if you rent a plane to somebody, your responsibility is discharged by
Checking for an IMCR or IR or the NQ would be an interesting area since it is not required, unless you can reasonably suspect or know that the proposed flight(s) will be illegal without these.
I had to look into this many years ago. And, yeah, got some funny cases 
I have no idea if this is CAA-only, or CPS-only, or whatever. Normally the CAA does its own prosecutions, but this is big stuff. The police involvement probably means it is not CAA-only.
If it succeeds under manslaughter it will have no impact on renters. It will be based on knowingly committing an illegal act which led to the deaths. The CPS will prosecute. It will be involuntary manslaughter which doesn’t require intent to kill.
The Times is behind a paywall except for the first little bit – at least in the UK it is.
Sadly, the usual thing these days is to deal with a case of ‘he knew the rules and he broke them’ by introducing new rules rather than resolving to better enforce the rules that were broken.
Unless the folks involved were very silly and left clear written records of the exact arrangements, I find it hard to imagine that anything will stick. An expensive defence lawyer is going to be better at this than either the CAA or the CPS.
