Question I ask though is this, if the TVOC has expended so much time, money and effort on getting the engineering staff qualified to work on 558, why do we now find the project stalled awaiting the return of MA staff, surely the whole idea of having in house certified staff was too make the TVOC a self contained operational facility reliant only on outside suppliers, not as we now see the MA company to complete any meaningful work on the airframe other than Anti-Dets. And if this is the case will they be beholding to them for the foreseeable future and at what cost.
Also, your point about the delay in obtaining this assistance until the end of April possibly has been one that has come up before but more along the lines of the management would certainly have know about this well in advance seems more than a little odd that it appears on the face of it that they did not take advantage of the
Progress that had been made over so many months it all seems to have been wasted to a large degree.
Public awareness at that time was high, yet for some reason was not capitalised upon instead we had numerous rather lame excuses as to why the test flights were not completed and had to watch puzzled while the staff all retired to a safe distance and the MA crew packed up their kit and left, seems now that they possibly knew what was going on inside the TVOC financially but the management as usual choose to keep silent on the matter leaving as we now see a large amount of cash being solicited to pick up the project yet again.
Andrew makes a good point on the FOI act and its possible use to lever the HLF into action and I agree that bitching about what has happened will not oblige the TVOC board to move one inch from their present course, but if as they say they are forced to close the project if they cannot guarantee the required finances are in place then possibly this might be the best course of action as in doing so they themselves would be obliged to step down leaving the way open for a replacement team to be appointed who might be more able too see the project too completion.
Cypherus
MA still hold the engineering authority on the aircraft BAe the design auths. For reasons which I shall try not to go into (due to not wanting to be sued) TVOC are not deemed competent enough to be let loose in the big wide world with a real aircraft (its not a big boys toy)
I am not privvy too the money neede by MA from TVOC but I do know as has been mentioned by others that marshalls wiped a debt of over 2million owed too them so im sure you must agree before they go back they would rightly want the money up front. I am not sure how long TVOC have known about the lads unavailability.
As for going down the hlf route it would look like the better option and just hope that if somebody does pick up the gauntlet its done right next time.
Dave