What is as safe as necessary?
I thought CAS was interesting yesterday when he commented that he was satisfied that Nimrod air to air refuelling was "as safe as necessary" - what does that mean? The underlying design weaknesses for what was, I understand, meant to be a temporary fit are still there so how are they getting round this or does as safe as necessary mean that they have calculated what they see as an acceptable chance of an accident - if so then surely the crews should be told what it is.
A few years ago both Nimrod and VC10 major servicings were consuming more manhours than it took to build the aircraft in the first place - is this still the case? Given that no inspection based servicing, even a major, can provide 100% cover then surely this is also a measure of the underlying airworthiness problems of these old aircraft that should have been parked in the Mojave Desert a long time ago!
It has always sruck me as odd, given that there are acceptable modern alternatives available, that we expect our aircrew to fight in airframes that would probably be difficult to get on the register of even a Third World nation's Regulatory Authority - but then neither the Treasury nor the MOD planners (anyway totally emasculated by the Treasury) can be expected to think like Mr O'Reilly! Perhaps that is also because nobody has yet pushed the "Duty of Care" arguments to the Courts as they would if a Ryanair jet was flown in an underlying unairworthy condition! Just a thought!
JB