But from what I can glean from others still on the fleet, nothing much has changed, other than the pipes no longer trail through the cabin prior to going into the tanks.
Now the system at the time was a success, no question about it, but was it the safest it could have been? I doubt it frankly. We often had fumes in the cabin post AAR, but we accepted it because it was an emergency 'short-term' fix and the success of the task out-weighed the possible dangers.
Winco, the originally designed refuel system (no AAR pipes) in the 1970s, has not changed, but has been regularly removed, inspected and re-fitted. The initial probe and temporory pipework that was put together during the Falklands War has long since gone. The new AAR pipework, that by necessity has to pass through the cabin, is double skinned and is monitored for interspace leaks by a detector. We have definitely moved on from the initial AAR mod.