This is an interactive presentation

Your role today — detective coach

How this fits the BYP pathway

By 4pm your team will have investigated a real-style incident and presented your findings.

Day Course Agenda

What investigators do — and a mystery

The AAIB — the real ones

• Air Accidents Investigation Branch — the UK's crash detectives
• Independent from police and regulators
• They do NOT assign blame
• Three questions: what happened · why it happened · how to prevent it

🎯 "The goal is safety, not punishment."

The AAIB in their own words — what we do

How investigations work — 6 steps

Notification — you decide: investigate or not?

Deployment — what's in your kit bag?

👥 Team assembled — specialists in engineering, operations, human factors

🧳 Ask the room: you're deploying — what do you take? (shout-outs first!)

THE KIT — tap to reveal

📷 Cameras · 📓 Notebooks · 📏 Measuring tools · 🦺 PPE — gloves & high-vis

🎯 First jobs on arrival: secure the scene, coordinate with emergency services, agree the plan

Evidence — the aircraft was watching

💡 "Even if nobody saw what happened, the aircraft did — and it recorded it." Tap each source:

The black box — the witness that survives

Step 4: Analysis — making evidence talk

• How will you analyse this case?
• Investigators must choose how to analyse the evidence
• Group it to find the story:

⏱️ Timeline — what happened first?

🗂️ Categories — human / technical / environment

🔗 Linking — how is it all connected?

❌ Elimination — what can we rule OUT?

Step 5: Conclusions — cause vs contributing

• Explain what happened using evidence — not guesses
• A good conclusion is supported, not popular

CAUSE → what directly led to the incident

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS → what made it more likely

…and then: does this lead to a recommendation?

Step 6: Safety recommendations

Only made if they improve safety — never to fill space. Sentence starters:

Evidence or assumption? — the investigator's reflex

Your first case — engine vibration (tick as you go)

Session 2 Objectives

• Identify relevant evidence
• Distinguish reliable vs unreliable information
• Build an initial picture without jumping to conclusions

Four case files — pick ONE per team

Your investigation worksheet

📝 Everything goes on the worksheet — it becomes your team's case file and feeds your final presentation.

🗂️ Sections follow the investigation process — fill them in order, no skipping to conclusions!

📄 Open / print the worksheet (PDF)

Session 2 task — build the picture

Session 3 Objective

• Turn Session 2's raw evidence into a logical explanation
• Identify patterns and relationships
• Hypothesis creation — develop possible explanations (plural!)
• Narrowing down — decide the most likely scenario

Analysis worksheet — five outputs (tick as you complete)

The final report — three headings

Now compare — the REAL report

Final Quiz — think like an investigator

What did we learn?