Originally Posted by
beardy
Common sense does not stand up in a court of law. Should there have been any incident or, God forbid, accident there would have been no defence. That is an unacceptable risk when dealing with children's lives. And all because 'common sense' was relied upon because it was easier than proper record keeping.
The common sense statement refers to the 'actual' average state of the machines as delivered to their current stores, as they seem to have flown there without drama. The tragedy of all this in the case of the Vigilants (remembering that this is a motor glider) was the machine and its motor were quite unaware of some paperwork glitch and were operating normally. That the audit trail was suspect was down to the contractor not employing enough staff to service the contract or overseeing the laptop based records. However why was this not picked up by the CUSTOMER who should have had oversight of all this. Those of us that were around when the MGSP operated saw a 'team' of qualified RAF staff service and repair machines during the week who were also able to complete duplicate inspections. Aircraft records are not a mystery or shrouded in secrecy and in fact I think the Air Cadet system was laptop based therefore quite easy to operate and check. We are talking about very simple machines (even the engine) with virtually no systems, that did not need endless mods.
Children had been flying (and going solo) in Air Cadet aircraft for decades with a safety record to be proud of, and in relation to the number of flights probably one of the best records in the world. The capability at the 'schools' was very high due to the nature of bringing staff on (mainly Cadets themselves) so everyone knew the job. Fast forward to 2014 when the audit trail was suspect (not the schools fault) and they had no alternative but to cease operations whilst they sorted out the problem. With little of no in house expertise the contractors stayed in place and another small fortune was made whilst the problem was not solved. Another sad reminder of what happens when you loose control of your own operation. It was not just about paperwork but the way it was handled afterwards.