[Peetwo]

Update 05/12/16: The knock on effect of poor NAA oversight.

Update 08/12/16:
Via Fox News Latino:

Bolivia arrests Lamia Airlines chief after lack of fuel caused crash that killed 71 people
Published December 06, 2016

The implications of survival in AAI -

The following is an excellent article by Joseph Wheeler (courtesy the Oz) which considers the implications for survivors and the further psychological trauma they are exposed to post accident/incident:

Colombia air disaster survivors endure hearing crash tapes

• Joseph Wheeler
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM December 9, 2016
  

Imagine surviving a catastrophic airline disaster and then having to listen to the news playing sound recordings of those last moments of terror.

It is something the survivors of last week’s air crash tragedy in Colombia regrettably will have to endure.

The crash will long be remembered for the deeply disturbing tapes that have been released outside the context of an official Annex 13 air accident investigation. The nation of Brazil mourns, the sporting world mourns; and the world of air accident investigation mourns the irretrievable cost of leaks of such sensitive recorded information which, properly decoded in context, will be one of the keys to properly determining just what went wrong.

It is not often that there are survivors to such disasters and their evidence about the aircraft’s final flight will also be important in settling the actual events that led to the accident. But think of the life that awaits them: injured, scarred, and robbed of sleep by the moments of terror and sights imprinted into their minds — sights that no one should ever see.

Their futures may be marred by a single night in November when disaster struck, and publicly available information that should never have been made free for all to hear — particularly those recovering as survivors of the crash itself.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world many others experienced a similar kind of terror — the shock precipitated by reportedly severe turbulence that injured seven people as they came to land in Sydney on an Air China flight.

Is there anything in common with the two events as markedly separated as they were in location and cause? It turns out that precisely the same international law potentially applies to both incidents to control the liability of the respective air carriers for death, and injury. In some ways it seems anomalous that a charter flight in South America, a simple point-to-point operation should be in the same category as an international airline’s long-haul flight from Asia to Australia — but the law was designed to make it simpler for those involved to access justice.

In both cases those injured or the families of the victims have recourse against the carrier by way of strict liability (meaning negligence does not need to be proven) with compensation payable to them essentially limited only by their proven financial losses.

In both cases, the essential element of the law applying is the fact that a contract of carriage was in place and the carriage was “international”.

There is a major battle in international air law over the specific circumstances when compensation may be paid for psychiatric injury by air carriers for surviving air passengers — and it is happening in Australia.

The case arises out of the 2009 ditching near Norfolk Island of a medevac aircraft operated between Samoa and Melbourne. Nurse Karen Casey is battling for the right to compensation for her mental injuries, particularly post traumatic stress disorder as a species of “bodily injury” rather than “pure” psychiatric injury.

The distinction is an important one and, because of the nature of international air law, the results of the appeal, presently being decided after a hearing in late November, will certainly have implications for claims made by those survivors who suffer PTSD.

If the appeal succeeds, then the prospect of compensation for PTSD following the terror of surviving an air accident will be lost; if the appeal is dismissed, the decision opens the way for those suffering PTSD (whether in Australia, following severe turbulence, or the jungles of South America, following a crash) to hold the air carrier accountable for the very real mental anguish suffered.

Joseph Wheeler is the principal of IALPG, national head of aviation law at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, and aviation legal counsel to the Australian Federation of Air Pilots.

MTF...P2