by HETTY VAN ROOIJ*
A recent piece of Brussels legislation, strengthening them for the EU, passed almost unnoticed.
“That regulation deserved better”, says Mme de Veyrac, French member of the European Parliament (EPP group) who guided it through the EP. ,, An independent inquiry into the causes of a crash is of extreme importance for the bereaved. It deals with the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. It bares the truth and in doing so, it can turn a page. Because it is the truth, and nothing but the truth, that can bring peace of mind to victims and relatives”.
Under the new regulation, each EU member state must appoint a national civil aviation safety investigation authority (SIA) with a budget big enough to conduct full investigations. Every plane crash, but also every near- plane crash, must be the subject of an investigation with the report ready within 12 months. The new EU legislation ensures the independence of the investigators, but it also it touches upon the safety of passengers and their rights. For instance: passengers are now entitled to name a friend or a relative, to be informed in the event of a crash, before they board a European plane. ‘Brussels’ also requires that, almost immediately after a crash, every European airline produces a passengers list and a list of dangerous goods on board. A European airline is also obliged to have a detailed plan on how to assist survivors and relatives.
But first and foremost the new EU regulation is there to ensure that safety investigators can do their work without local authorities, and without the judiciary, looking over their shoulder. The witnesses involved - pilots, cabin crew, ground personnel- want to be certain that they testify without fear for the judiciary. Voice and image recorders in the cockpit and the air traffic control units may be used only for safety investigation, unless there is an overriding reason for disclosure to the judiciary. An act of terrorism, for instance. Or a hijacking.
How important is that independence? Just remember the accident in Tripoli in May 2010, where 33 people were killed when an Air Afriqiyah Airbus crashed close to the Libyan capital. The Libyan authorities quickly derailed the work of the investigators; they decided that the pilot died from a heart attack and that nobody, and certainly not state-owned Air Afriqiyah or the Libyan state itself, was to blame. Or think of the tragedy last year near Smolensk, Russia, where a crash with a Polish military plane killed 95 people- among them prime minister Jaruzelski. The Polish government refused to accept the findings of the Russian investigators, who effectively blamed the Polish plane crew for deciding to land despite fog and warnings from (Russian) ground controllers.
The international ‘constitution’ of accident investigation is the now- famous annex 13 of the International Civil Aviation Convention, better known as the Chicago Convention. Annex 13 states that the sole objective of an accident investigation is to prevent accidents and incidents, and the investigation is ‘not apportion blame of liability’. Also under Annex 13, the State where the accident occurs is automatically appointed to lead the investigation. Under that rule, Russia and Libya where leading the investigations after the crashes near Smolensk and Tripoli. So they were in a position that may have given them the opportunity to meddle with the answers to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ and come up with their own interpretation of the facts.
Polish investigators, looking into the air disaster in Smolensk last year, plan to complain about Russia's alleged mishandling of the probe at a new EU civil aviation club. ,, It’s about raising awareness at the EU level about problems in the crash investigation and problems in co-operating with the Russians. So that people in the EU know that it's not so easy to work with the Russians," explains Edmund Klich, a Polish lieutenant who worked with Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) on the Smolensk crash. The European Network of Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Authorities, a spin-off of the new EU-legislation, was created last September to advise EU institutions and to make EU-wide air safety recommendations. Klich: Russia violated the rules in Annex 13 on numerous occasions. Now let the specialists decide”.
And the crash in Libya? Since the civil war broke out, the phone lines in Tripoli are dead. It is just one big question mark” says Veeru Meewa, a lawyer who represents the bereaved of 33 victims. ,, My clients don’t hear anything. And I have told them: they may never hear the truth`.
* Ms Hetty van Rooij is freelance journalist in Brussels
By: N. Peter Kramer
