basil - please reserve your vitriol for Manuel! I wasn't implying that the RAF's standards are necessarily 'higher', merely that to fly out of the DEFATO scenario safely and competently, you do need regular sim practice, etc - and you do NOT need a FE shutting down an engine which is producing thrust before you know that you can survive without that thrust. In any case, Nigel taught the RAF how to do it properly in the first place...
I certainly agree that a 2-e fail on a wing-mounted 4-jet at high AUW and at V2 would be far less likely to be survivable. The rear-mounted 4-jet design of the VC10 was economically less advantageous in the short term, but the design was probably inherently 'safer' until the advent of highly reliable ETOPS twinjets rendered commercial 4-jets somewhat unnecessary.
[ 01 January 2002: Message edited by: BEagle ]</p>