People have been complaining for years on this thread about "known defects" for which there was no rectification programme; yet there was no record of multiple Incident Reports detailing system failures
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It is a well documented fact that, in the previous few years (early 90s), the RAF had systematically cut the funding for conducting, inter alia, Fault Investigations (which is effectively what you speak of). And if you have no MF761 to underpin the requirement for a rectification programme, then the latter is seldom, if ever, approved. Engineering Authorities (as they were called then) were “advised” by Suppliers (who, when AMSO was formed, had gained control of funding designed to maintain airworthiness) not to bother requesting investigations, to save up MF760s and submit omnibus MF760As; in an effort to save money. The natural outcome was delay and often, at unit level, cessation of raising MF760s, it being deemed a waste of time as no visible action was being taken. (MF760/A/1 – Narrative Fault Report / Fault Investigation Request / Fault Investigation Report respectively).
As little money was being spent on investigations, requests for re-instatement of funding fell on deaf Supplier ears, who responded with the ludicrous argument “You never spent any last year (as none was released!) so you don’t need any next year”. Another cracker was “Reliability improves with age, the kit is old, so it shouldn’t fail. The MF760s must be wrong”. If I recall, that was severe cracking in gearboxes. And thus, a crucial part of the Airworthiness Regs (JSP 553 Ch. 5 Maintaining Airworthiness) could not be complied with. The situation became progressively worse. At first (1990-ish) money would be released eventually if the problem was safety related; in time the policy became “no safety tasks to be undertaken”. Suppliers / non-engineers being permitted to make engineering decisions has been a problem more or less ever since, although funding has improved somewhat since the Suppliers lost total control. But, not sufficiently to take retrospective action, so there remain huge gaps in the airworthiness audit trails. This is not only my view, but was later re-iterated by the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. Their reports are open source. It has also been mentioned during recent Inquests.
When considering Mull (or any other accident), please consider what happened in the preceding years. Don’t be fooled by the MoD argument that everything is ok now, so it can’t have been a problem 15 years ago. I think this important perspective is missing from much of the debate.