FJJP,
Although you make some good points, with which I fully agree, the decision in 1990/91 to stay on a peacetime maintenance schedule was both brave and sensible.
Although we were initially given authority to waive maintenance early on in the deployment, this was reversed sometime around Nov 90. In the event, sticking to normal peacetime schedules did not impact on us achieving the task (at Dhahran anyway!). What it did save was the absolute chaos that would have followed in Mar 91 if we had just thrown the rule book out the window at the start.
Far better to have had a manageable backlog of deferred maintenance than the aircraft groundings that would have followed in the peacetime because we would have flown past the authorised limits.
Clearly, if the conflict had been a real balls to the wall war (in terms of national survival I mean, clearly no slur intended on those who fought and died!) then the rules would have gone out the window and stayed there. As it was, the decision allowed us to recover to do further ops far faster than any other option.
Last edited by Red Line Entry; 3rd Apr 2005 at 22:17.