I entirely accept as I said earlier that the maintenance teams at Kinloss were doing their damndest and doing it well. I believe it not just because you say it here, or because having flown Crab Air too many times during my army service, it often seemed that if the slightest bloody nut was not up to scratch they wouldn't fly. I believe it because we have an independent report in the shape of the QinetiQ report of March 2006 which says it.
What I can't get my head round though is that ACM Torpy said on Tuesday that AAR was suspended without exception after last month's fuel leak during AAR because "we couldn't replicate the fault on the ground".
Strangely enough the QinetiQ report said something very similar:
"It was also suggested that RAMS cannot detect some of the leaks reported in-theatre when the aircraft return to Kinloss. This is partially explained by fuel load in tanks, climatic conditions, ineffective vacuum in tanks, etc, and Qinetiq were unable to establish a clear impression of how these non-detected leaks are addressed.”
So believing the first, I have to assume that a lot of people were saying with some degree of concern look we can't replicate this fault so we can't fix it, they clearly told the QinetiQ team exactly that. Who was it that was ignoring these concerns? And why did Torpy seem to think that the inability to replicate the fault was something new that suddenly meant AAR had to stop until it could be replicated?