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Boeing is not part of the Helios air crash trial because of money involved

10 April 2013 / 18:04:20  GRReporter
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2. Many omissions regarding scientific examinations of certain components at the BOEING labs.       

3. Vital components have been LOST very conveniently.

It is imperative when incidents or accidents occur that every avenue is fully investigated and exhausted to ascertain the cause so that this information can be used to prevent these incidents from reoccurring. Passenger and crew safety is paramount.

    In your opinion why did the Greek authorities deliberately refuse to re-open this investigation?

    In my opinion the Greeks are refusing to reopen the investigation because they are afraid to loose face, secondly afraid to have a head-on clash with the Americans for many reasons and thirdly the BOEING company is involved, surely fat payments to the Greeks investigators.

    How could the flight safety benefit from this new investigation?

    As mentioned before it is imperative that all accidents and incidents are fully investigated to ascertain the reasons why and determine how they can be prevented. Therefore reopening the Helios trial would ensure that the crash was investigated correctly and the information obtained would help prevent this tragedy from reoccurring. Address issues such as hardware, aircraft design and human factors. Ensure that pilots across the world in such difficult situations are better prepared in assessing a situation, acting and not getting confused by incomplete warning systems. This is Vital in air safety to learn from these tragedies.

    Do you consider the trial in Athens fair and impartial and why?

    Both trials in Athens were completely unfair and grave violations of our human rights have occurred.
 Firstly – for the Court of First Instance, to carry on the questioning of vital witnesses without the presence of our Lawyers, is unheard of.
 Secondly they did not want to hear what any of our witnesses and experts had to say about the new evidence that emerged from the Canadian experts and how the Company was running.
 The Greek accident team NEVER bothered to interview key personnel, UK Civil Aviation officials (CAA) who had an overview on how the company was run. They never bothered to interview on both occasions the Training Managers that were in place during the German Captain employment in 2004 and 2005. Lies regarding the training of both involved Pilots from their Greek so-called expert, in spite of numerous attempts by Ianko Stoimenov to show the court the JAR OPS regulations regarding Crew training and checking. The Greeks insisted that the Pressurisation exercise had to be completed 
every 6 months. This is not true and in accordance with the JAA regulations which as a company it complied with, every major aircraft system failure was to be completed in 3 yearly cycles.
 The appeals court never examined all the witnesses that gave evidence in the Court of First Instance. Only 4 witnesses testified and yet the final verdict was based on the Court of the First Instance, which is unheard off. We were never given the chance to bring all of our witnesses and experts to testify but it was only allowed for us to bring all witnesses to testify in one day.

    If we have to take a lesson from this trial how should the aviation accidents be legally and juridicalyl addressed. What would this lesson be?

    A lesson from this trial is firstly that ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation - author’s note) annex 13 (which states that, “The sole objective of the investigation of an accident or incident shall be the prevention of accidents and incidents. It is not the purpose of this activity to apportion blame or liability” - author’s note), regarding aircraft accident has to be amended to cover all the eventualities. For instance re-opening of investigations. As it stands today, does only the country of occurrence have the right to reopen an investigation? Judicial systems should not be allowed to use 100% accident reports as the only means of prosecution. This trial has put aviation safety back into the dark ages. Everybody will be afraid to speak out in case they will be brought to justice.

Follow Maria on Twiter @MariaSTopalova

 

Tags: George Kikides Maria S. Topalova Helios air crash Boeing Ianko Stoimenov investigation
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