Perhaps I can try to summarise the extent of the scandal in as few words as possible.
What Happened:
A substantial fleet of RAF aircraft (the world's largest fleet of military gliders) was flown while non-airworthy. This led to schoolchildren being placed at an unacceptably high Risk to Life (RtL). Most of the fleet has now had to be scrapped while a large amount of money has had to be spent getting the remainder of the fleet back in the air
Why It Happened:
A series of SYSTEMIC (sorry for the caps there, but deserved) failures across the RAF's airworthiness management systems. These are not new - they are repeats of failures that the RAF was warned about, failed to prevent, and which led directly to a number of fatal accidents. Now they have happened again.
Failures happened in the area of 'type airworthiness'. The aircraft were not correctly procured (a fleet replacement should never have been permitted out of an in-year underspend) and the required certification and support arrangements were apparently not put in place. A safety case was not maintained. CAS himself admitted that the gliders 'could not continue without a safety case'.
Failures happened in the area of what is now called 'continuing airworthiness'. Servicing contracts were not properly supervised. Quality control systems were ineffective. Poor practice was allowed to occur. Document control was deficient, leading to loss of vital evidence of airworthiness. Configuration control was lost, both aircraft and documents. The RAF 's repeated reorganisations of the gliding chain of command after 2010 introduced precisely the hazardous 'organisational churn' that Haddon-Cave exposed in 2009.
Although the fleet was grounded in early 2014, it is clear that nobody in the RAF had any grasp of the scale of the problem. Their initial attempts to recover the fleet were a shambles for over 15 months. The MAA had to issue a letter to OC2FTS in September 2015 telling him to get his CAMO act together, while pointing out potential increases in RtL. Even this didn't prevent him failing his next CAMO audit at the end of that year. Even after this, milestones have come and gone.
Why It's Not Made the Mainstream Press:
Mainly, the public's lack of interest in defence matters, which means the media don't attach much importance to such stories. However, this has been exploited by the RAF, who have carried out a textbook example of a 'cover up', namely:
1. Get a Minister out in front to take the flak, referring to the 'MoD' and not the 'RAF'
2. Get a retired RAF senior officer to put up a smokescreen by complaining about 'inaccurate reporting' when that hadn't happened
3. Give the Minister downright false statements to sign and send to MPs and members of the Lords who were asking questions
4. Limit their statements about airworthiness to mention of 'challenges', 'concerns', and 'loss of confidence'.
I'm going to go 'off line' now for a while - i think i've bored the good PPrune audience enough.
Best regards as ever to those good RAF engineers who, hopefully, are now being listened to
Engines