Legal  Meddling with Accidents

The Flight Safety Foundation  sharply criticized the interference of prosecutors in ongoing aviation accident investigations in Italy and France, warning that such interference hampers efforts to improve aviation safety and prevent similar accidents in the future. The safety investigations of a Cessna Citation accident in Rome on Feb. 7, 2009, and the crash of an Air New Zealand Airbus A320 off the coast of France on Nov. 27, 2008, are being held up because law enforcement authorities seized vital evidence before safety investigators could examine it. In recent days, the French authorities have returned some of the Airbus evidence to safety investigators. However, Italian authorities still have not shared the evidence. Laws in both countries allow the judicial investigation to take the lead, and vital safety evidence, such as the cockpit voice and flight data recorders, historically has been withheld from safety investigators. "Unless there is evidence of sabotage, law enforcement and judicial authorities need to step aside, allow accident investigators immediate access to the wreckage and to surviving crew and passengers, and let safety professionals do their job," said FSF President and CEO William R. Voss. “It's far more important that we learn what happened, and why, than to build a criminal case,” he added.