EdSet100
“As aircrew, I unwittingly trusted other folk (engineering policymakers) to keep an eye on the safety of all this”.
Quite right too. This is one area I hope the review studies.
They should ask why non-engineers are permitted to make sometimes crucial engineering decisions. It’s not unusual for an engineering project manager to spend half his time running around over-ruling decisions made by unqualified superiors.
Also, and I can only speak from personal experience, it is now nearly 20 years since a Service Engineering Authority (an IPT function nowadays) first approached me (as a PE project manager) and asked me to write a new maintenance policy for a system, as they no longer had the expertise.
There’s so much wrong with the above you could write a book. Two simple sentences contain a host of fundamental breaches of airworthiness regulations. The Service EAs used to be self reliant, with PE a fallback. A viable fallback, as PMs had to have been there and done it before promotion. But when you come to rely on the fallback, and the latter’s boss announces he doesn’t want engineers in PM posts, then the fallback becomes Industry. They, too, offloaded engineering posts and many are now employed on a consultancy basis. Consultants, by their nature, are transients. Where is the continuity of expertise today? (The Corporate knowledge which is itself a fundamental airworthiness requirement). Where is the recruitment ground for MoD project engineers who understand military aviation? Sold off, that’s where. Lining the pockets of shareholders, when we should be more concerned with stakeholders. (i.e. YOU). Like I said before, these are not revelations. Predictable, predicted and ignored.