30mRad, I am sure that your ex BOI presidents are being entirely sincere in their beliefs that their findings were sound. The problem is that of "stove piping" highlighted by Tucumseh. The basic principle of Flight Safety, is that "everyone knows what anyone knows". My experience of RAF flight safety stems from some 40 years ago, but is perhaps all the more instructive for that. Great emphasis was put on dissemination, at Squadron, Ops Wing, Station and Command level, using locally and centrally produced newsletters, magazines, film flashes, posters, etc to make everyone aware that Flight Safety concerned them, be they cooks, bottle washers or CinCs! No one was allowed to use rank or influence to obstruct this knowledge, either up or down. I used to be a right pain (as Sqn FSO) by collecting FOD off the apron and dumping it on the OC Ops Wg's desk, albeit in a bin liner (the FOD, not the OC Ops Wg or me), saying that I believed it all belonged to him. "Point taken", he would say between gritted teeth. And that point was everyone had a duty to ensure Flight Safety, not because we were all Cold War wimps, but so that when it became a Hot War we would have a force largely intact, rather than whittled away by "isolated incidents", to quote the CAS. Now we learn from Tucumseh that this culture has been stopped in its tracks for the last 16 years by obstructing the funding for the necessary modifications required for known deficiencies discovered by incident/occurrence reporting or ultimately by BoIs, and that furthermore the free dissemination of information within the system, fundamental to its working, is obstructed by "stove piping". That is why I no longer have faith in BoIs, because what their Presidents should have been advised, of what was already known, was not always revealed.
Last edited by Chugalug2; 1st July 2007 at 13:28.
Reason: wrong attribution