Originally Posted by
Foghorn Leghorn
It is - in the context of what LFH is saying.
Well, I suppose if you read the MAA's regs you might think it simple. But if you consider what must actually happen to maintain airworthiness, which is a prerequisite to Continuing Airworthiness, then matters are not simple at all. Not least because MoD stopped doing it many years ago, and is finding it impossible to resurrect on older fleets. But enough of Hawk, AWACS, etc.
I do however recall two events during EFA development.
First is that, astonishingly, they were given a Configuration Control Manager. Kudos to the person who asked, as most teams do, but it had never been granted on any rotary project or programme I knew of. If you wanted to do CC, you did it in your spare time, in the evenings and at week-ends, and certainly didn't let on to anyone above 1 Star. I have seen calling notices for mandatory CC Boards sent out, and non-technical officers allowed to issue directives that no-one shall attend. Same with risk management. The funerals were always sad affairs.
Second is that, in 1996, EFA (actually, a very highly paid professor employed as a consultant) declared to all and sundry that they'd discovered a new phenomenon called 'electronic component obsolesence'. It was quietly pointed out that MoD already had three specifications and a Def Stan setting out mandated policy. That, EFA simply had to implement them. However, to be aware that in doing so they'd be breaching directives not to maintain airworthiness, of which component unavailability is a core component, and of which obsolescence is one aspect.
EFA toppled.
The two are of course linked, and I wonder if this is perhaps one reason for the decision to abandon T1. Another might be the tendency to destroy engineering records of in service aircraft, which the safety cases increasingly rely on. Hawk, again. Gliders. Nimrod.