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There are a couple of reasons for this. First, unless the aircraft just suddenly fell apart, the pilot is always involved somehow. For example, in this case, th

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, unless the aircraft just suddenly fell apart, the pilot is always involved somehow. For example, in this case, the direct cause of the crash was the pilot providing a hard right (?) rudder input. Second, and more cynically, the representation of pilots in the investigation is the weakest (and identifying the pilots as at fault causes the least economic consequences on everybody). For example, if you look back to when Airbus introduced the fly-by-wire system with moded inputs, their planes were dropping like bricks. (Including by the plane's test pilot at the Paris air show.) However, most (all?) of those incidents were assigned to pilot error in spite of the fact that an airplane that would change its flight characteristics or even conflict with pilot actions was a fun new thing.

kayodelycaon 4y ago
The airshow one looks very much like pilot error... not a great example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q You have an experienced pilot who knew the plane and its safety systems disable alpha floor protection before completely botching the approach. He could have aborted and gone around to get set up properly. But he didn't. Instead he dropped to 30 feet on idle engine thrust, in a high drag configuration, and didn't press the TOGA button until 4 seconds before the crash. That's not enough time for the engine to spool up from idle. I don't support prosecuting pilots except in the most egregious cases and I think involuntary manslaughter was the right call here. Edit: The pilot claimed to have done this maneuver 20 times prior to the crash.