Originally Posted by
Chugalug2
LFH, Engines, SASless, thank you all for endorsing this book, and hopefully encouraging others to download and read it too. I think we all share a feeling of its importance, the culmination of years of research, of gathering evidence otherwise withheld from Coroners, FAI's, BoI's, and SI's. Military Air Safety is no longer safe in the hands of the MOD/RAF. Air Regulation and Air Accident Investigation must be made truly independent of the MOD/RAF, and of each other.
In the meantime it is incumbent on all aviators, be they aircrew, engineers, or indeed neither, to make themselves familiar with what airworthiness is and how it must be sustained from start to finish of an aircraft's life. Too many of us are content to leave that to others. When those others are ordered to subvert the regulations and suborn them, then the result is often yet another fatal air accident and/or the loss of entire fleets, often causing the loss of entire capabilities. That will continue until the RAF leadership bites the bullet and faces up to the illegal acts of certain RAF Air Officers and of the continuing cover up of that since.
That we have far to travel along the road of reform is made clear by the DECU connectors issue mentioned above. That the MOD's baleful influence extends to many other national institutions is obvious from the follow up action resulting from the tragic death of Red Arrow Sean Cunningham. An illegal RTI led directly to this fatal accident yet it was not the RAF that was brought to book, but rather Martin Baker which was prosecuted by the HSE and convicted. When Air Safety is treated so arbitrarily we are on a slippery slope that will not end well for any of us. It has to change!
One final word. Engines, you call for RAF engineers to do their job and say NO when given an illegal order (the "something like this" you mention). I can only but endorse your call, but in fairness I should caution them that it is still MOD ministerial policy that such illegal orders are allowable and that it is an offence not to obey them! The rot is at the very top of the RAF and it is up to the RAF leadership to resolve it rather than just leaving those at the workface to try to do so. Unlike your RN experience where you have rightly celebrated the top cover extended to you by your superiors, those you urge to resist, rather than having such protection, are instead answerable to those issuing those same illegal orders. We urgently need an independent Regulator to enforce the Regulations and expose those seeking to subvert them.
SASless you ask why such illegality has not been prosecuted. It is because operator, regulator, and investigator are to all intents and purposes one and the same; the MOD and its various subsidiaries. That will continue until the MOD is made subject to the authority of an independent Military Air Regulator and Air Accident Investigator who are in turn independent of each other. Until then UK Military Airworthiness will remain compromised and avoidable fatal air accidents will continue.
Chug, as long as the MAA is controlled by retired senior officer they will never be impartial. At the inception of the MAA I applied fora job and was bluntly told as I had not been an officer I was never going to get in says it all really. As for the DECUs I do remember when I worked on the chinook fleet at Gutersloh watching the actuators moving themselves with no-one in the cockpit.