The recent crash of a Singapore Airlines jet at CKS International Airport has highlighted the tenuous position of Taiwan's Aviation Safety Council (ASC,
The independent air accident investigation agency was established in 1998 to investigate accidents free from interference by outside agencies. The thinking was that Taiwan should focus on investigations that aim to establish the causes of accidents for the purposes of future accident prevention.
To achieve this it was necessary to establish an agency whose work would remain free from the influence of regulatory and other authorities to avoid conflicts of interest.
Agencies established for such purposes can be found in countries regarded by experts as having excellent accident investigation and air safety systems, including, among others, the US, France, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
After the Singapore Airlines crach at CKS, prosecutors insisted on pressing criminal charges against the pilots involved if they were deemed to have been professionally negligent, an example of the way the ASC can be undermined by the fact that other agencies are not prevented by law from pursuing investigations into air traffic accidents.
One such "agency" is the judiciary, whose desire to see the law take its course when there is a possibility that criminal conduct may have been a factor in an accident, may conflict with safety investigators' needs to ensure a free flow of information.
Taiwan's problem
Taiwan is not a signatory to Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation which lays down international standards and recommended practice for aircraft accident investigations.
The ASC nevertheless regards Annex 13 as the guiding principle to its investigations, which it undertakes, in accordance with the Annex, "solely for the purpose of preventing accidents and incidents," rather than to apportion blame.
Annex 13 also says that witness statements, cockpit voice recordings, and opinions expressed in the analysis of information should not be available other than to the investigative agency, while investigations for other purposes should be clearly separate from safety investigations.
"Annex 13 is now further supported by the results of psychological and accident research showing that human error is inevitable but manageable," said Rob Lee, an Australian human factors and system safety specialist.
"Exploring and fixing management flaws in the complex system incorporating regulators, airlines, aircraft designers and so on, is far more constructive than punishing those whose errors, mostly unintentional, are more perceivable," Lee said.
Without specific legislation, it is also possible that prosecutors may disrupt accident investigations in future by insisting on taking custody of flight recorders, said Yong Kay (
New Zealand's Experience
John Britton, chief executive of the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) of New Zealand, said that in 1995 the New Zealand police searched the TAIC and seized the CVR and flight data recordings recovered after an air accident causing four fatalities.
The TAIC argued that New Zealand was a signatory to Annex 13 and asked the High Court to decide which agency's investigation had precedence. The High Court ruled for the police. That decision, however, led the New Zealand Ministry of Transport to propose legislation to ensure the precedence of accident investigations in the future.
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