It is impossible to establish a “safety culture” with the threat of criminalization hanging over employees’ heads.

Citing “a built-in conflict of interest” in the Brazilian military’s accident investigation report for the 2006 collision of a Boeing 737 airliner and an Embraer Legacy 600, one of the attorneys representing the business jet pilots against manslaughter charges claims the document “manufactures and exaggerates liability on the part of the pilots.”

General Electric’s acquisition of Smiths Aerospace in May 2007 marked an expansion from engine building into aircraft systems. No sooner than the ink had dried on the purchase contract, the Cincinnati-based OEM was busy developing a strategy integrating cyber-based aircraft systems with its engine products.