Originally Posted by
Easy Street
"Could not happen" is always going to be too ambitious a statement where people are involved. People are forever finding new and often convoluted ways to screw up despite the very best efforts of other people to design systems that stop them screwing up. So yes, it could happen in the modern RAF. Is it likely? I don't know. I'd say the Tutor midair (arthritic pilot allowed to fly aerobatic aircraft despite being unable to look out properly), Cunningham ejection (ill-advised seat maintenance regime, inappropriate time pressures leading to incorrect harness routing and moving seat pins at high speed during landing roll), Voyager negative-g incident (unsecured loose article), Catterick Puma crash (gross indiscipline), GR4 Moray Firth midair (not the direct cause, but still of concern: staff WSO afraid of medium level flight), Reds engineer killed at Valley (inadequate crew training or inappropriate designation of supernumerary crew, take your pick) - and those are just off the top of my head - all indicate that RAF people have shown themselves more than capable of making disastrous mistakes and misjudgements in recent memory.
[Coincidental or not, rather a lot of those killed or injured in that list were people to whom the RAF owed a special duty of care: air cadets, students and passengers.]
Of course you are correct, but the sheer list of incompetences in the case in question suggests drink. drugs or deranged to me: ........ negligence, disobedience, idiocy, farce.
Your list pinpoints single primary causes.