Wouldn't want to be that guy

The International Herald Tribune has the story of the mechanic who cleared the doomed plane to take off: "Spanair said the mechanic dealt with a problem in an air temperature gauge that forced the pilot to abandon a first attempt to take off. About an hour later, when the MD-82 finally did take off, it crashed near the end of the runway, burning and largely disintegrating. A total of 153 of the 172 people aboard were killed. Police and investigators probing the deadly plane crash in Madrid have questioned the mechanic who cleared the plane for takeoff. The newspaper El Pais quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation as saying that during two sessions of testimony Friday — first with police and then with crash investigators — the mechanic insisted that the gauge malfunction was a minor glitch which had nothing to do with Wednesday's crash... Aviation experts have said this problem probably did not cause the crash... Spanair said the mechanic dealt with the gauge problem by essentially turning the device off, and said this was an accepted procedure because the gauge was not an absolutely essential piece of equipment. But the head of Spanish civil aviation, Manuel Bautista, told the AP in an interview Friday that the gauge should be closely examined to see if it did contribute to the accident. Bautista said a combination of failures likely caused the disaster... Relatives of people who died in the crash met Friday night with Spanair representatives and complained angrily that the company was not providing any information on what might have caused the crash. Some said their loved ones had sent them cell phone text messages saying that had tried to get off the plane after the mechanical problem emerged, but were not allowed to. Spanair declined to comment on the issue Saturday."

Rico says he smells lawsuit but, if one of his loved ones wasn't permitted off the plane, he'd think about homicide... (And he never liked flying in any of the MD-series aircraft; according to Wikipedia, they've been involved in "57 incidents, including 24 hull-loss accidents, with 1,176 fatalities". That may not be a record, but it's not good...)