POBJOY:-
It is the same whether it is a Glider or an Ejection seat, the hands on guys 'make the system' that can not be replaced by box ticking and sheds loads of paperwork to cover it up. Hats off to those who still 'make it happen' despite the clots in charge.
I may have misunderstood your point, in which case apologies. The two examples you mention were rendered unairworthy by the combined efforts of the clots at the top as well as folks at the sharp end. You can't carry out unrecorded work on such systems without rendering them unairworthy. No-one knows what you've done and, in the case of gliders returned to the skies, they first have to be taken to pieces, carefully examined, and rectified if need be. Whether anything was found of an unairworthy nature or not I have no idea. It would have been incidental anyway, for without a continuous and audited paper trail it has to be assumed that the airframe (in this case) is unairworthy. You must ground it permanently, unless it is such a basic airframe such as a glider that it can be taken apart and rebuilt IAW the regs. Whether that makes any economic sense or not is of course down to the clots at the top.
As to the ejection seats, the clots excelled themselves. They closed the station servicing bays which were an essential piece of infrastructure for maintaining the airworthiness of the seats. Routine servicing IAW the regs now required them to be moved off station to do so. Fair enough, until the matter of the cracked beams emerged. Top clot says they must be inspected every 50 hours in situ! The moment the first scissor shackle bolt was undone that seat became unairworthy, because it couldn't then be done up again and drogue release demonstrated as the regs required. The man who paid with his life for this sabotage was Sean Cunningham. The top clot responsible was not held to account but rather the manufacturer, despite never having warranted such action and having advised the RAF of the correct servicing procedure for the very same system decades before!
Again, apologies if I have misrepresented the point you were making. I, like many here, benefitted from the dedication of volunteer gliding instructors sending me solo many many years ago. I have no doubt that the gliders involved were airworthy, and that all repairs and servicing were properly recorded to enable that. It was only after the attack on UK Military Airworthiness by RAF VSOs much later, to plunder its ring fenced Air Safety budgets, that the rot set in.