Whilst the aircraft may not have had any snags of which the aircrew or groundcrew were aware, it might still have had an inherent design fault sufficient to cause its destruction.
I'm sure that the BOAC crews who operated the first Comets thought that their aircraft were fully serviceable. But a design flaw (nothing to do with the Nimrod accident) caused the structural failures and inevitable consequence for the 60 people on board the 3 Comet 1s which fell out of the sky in the early 1950s.
buoy15, all 'accidents' have some primary cause. Which must be clearly established if the aircraft is to be operated with adequate safety in future.
Incidentally, construction and use regulations mean that car (or 4x4) brakes are unlikely to suffer a total failure these days; similarly, a total engine failure is unlikely unless the vehicle runs out of fuel. But there again, how many modern cars have design features inherited from the early 1950s?
Last edited by BEagle; 19th May 2008 at 08:47.
Reason: Spooling miskates!