Shrike is correct: we snagged everything as we were the guys who had to fly the things at the end of the day. BUT, what happened after that
VB controlled. Engineers often just moved snags around the fleet or the age old "ground tested and found servicable" tag would appear next to a snag in the tech log.
Bottom line was money wasn't spent on maintenance and the poor old engineers did what they could to keep the planes flying and "legal" under tremedous pressure from Vermin and his henchmen. I' sure if the budget was there, the maintanence would have been up to scratch, but as te engineers would say "we don't have a spare/there isn't money for that."
If the planes were as up to date as
VB claimed, why did it take so long for all the a/c to be released from SAFAIR? ZS-OVG still hadn't been declared fit by the time the NW ship sunk. Apparently something to do with the undercart.
Also what
VB failed to say in the his interview with the papers is that yes the cone bolts all had serial numbers etc BUT they had never, yes never, been NDT'd in their service history with NW. That is fact. Also the cradle that held flight 723's engine on had a fatigue crack in it. Whether or not it was mandatory to NDT/X-ray the cradles of those engines I don't know but I believe a crack should have been picked up somehwere in the continuous maintanence proccess.
I agree that the CAA may have handled the whole thing badly and perhaps there were knives out for Nationwide and
VB but as the old saying goes, where there is smoke there is fire.