Beaumont Named Lecture by Hon. Sir Charles Haddon-Cave

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” (E.F. Schumacher)

The 2014 Beaumont Named Lecture will be delivered by The Hon. Sir Charles Haddon-Cave, High Court Judge, Judiciary of England and Wales.

RAF Nimrod XV230 suffered a catastrophic mid-air fire whilst on a routine mission over Helmand Province in Afghanistan on 2 September 2006. This led to the total loss of the aircraft and the death of all 14 service personnel on board. It was the biggest single loss of life of British service personnel in one incident since the Falklands War.

The cause was not enemy fire, but leaking fuel being ignited by an exposed hot cross-feed pipe. It was a pure technical failure. It was an accident waiting to happen. The underlying causes were organisational and managerial.

There are deep lessons to be learned by all organisations from this incident.

This Named Lecture honours Major Kenneth Beaumont CBE, DSO, MA (Oxon), AFRAeS. Beaumont was the UK’s most prominent name in air law in his age, after starting as technical advisor to Imperial Airways in the mid-1920s. For many years his firm, Beaumont and Son, was one of the leading aviation practices in the world. He was also a founding editor of Shawcross and Beaumont on Air Law, which was first published in 1945 and remains the leading textbook to this day.