Is it a just a thing, a JUST Culture thing or just a cultural thing?

I read a very interesting article in the May 2012 edition of Flight International magazine about the case of four defendants in the Helios Airways court case in Greece.

In August 2005, a Boeing 737 operated by Cypriot airline Helios Airways, took off from Larnaca, Cyprus for Athens, apparently and inadvertently with its pressurization control set to manual and not automatic.  This was not discovered by the crew in the pre-flight checks.  The story of this accident is very interesting in itself but to cut a long story short, the crew eventually succumbed to hypoxia and the aircraft crashed killing all 121 people on board.

A Cypriot Court tried three of the four Greek case defendants and found them not guilty.  Apparently however, because the crash occurred on Greek soil, four defendants were subsequently tried and found guilty in a Greek Court.  They received sentences of 123 years each (yes- 123 years) reduced to 10 years each in jail. 

The legal logic applied to this case appears to be as simple as; there was a crash so someone must be legally responsible for it occurring; but who is responsible? 

Significantly, according to the Flight International article, the Greek Court used the accident investigation report as the basis of the argument against four defendants; The Helios Managing Director, The Operations Manager, The Chief Pilot and the Engineering Manager.  The evidence used to write the investigation report is not generally gathered on the same basis as criminal evidence.  All are intending to appeal.

Apparently, the Engineer who was not charged in the Cypriot case assisted the investigators who later gave evidence that his actions were neither wrong nor causal.  The article stated that as a result of his co-operation with investigators, he was found guilty and has landed in the slammer for 10 years.  The author points out the strategic damage of cases such as this; why would someone want to assist openly with an investigation when their honesty could have life changing repercussions?

Sometimes an accident is just an accident!  In an age where humans like to know everything and think they do, this is a crushing reality for some.  People make mistakes and although it is sad for all concerned, there must be some acknowledgement of the fallibility of the human condition.