SFO,
Thanks for your kind words. I was writing from an aircrew perspective about the Safety Case. It is likely that the senior (ground) engineers at Kinloss were aware of its existance, but there was no knowledge of it on the aircrew front line or, I believe, the Staneval, who are only now involved with the IPT in this important area.
Should the aircrew have known about these matters at the outset, nearly 5 years ago? Absolutely, we should have. Should we have reached for the JSP 550 series before now? Well, thats a debatable point. The RAF is founded on teamwork and there has to be reliance on people, whom the aircrew and the front line engineers do not even know exist, to look after our best interests and that of the aircraft. Obviously, no one on the front line should be denied access to the 550 series, but they are clearly published for the guidance of the higher-ups, although we can all learn about front line Flight Safety matters from them.
From what little I have seen and heard of it, the Nimrod Safety Case is almost 2000 sides of A4 paper which was never presented to the aircrew for our input on the functional hazards that exist. Many assumptions were made by BAeS and IPT engineers on how and when we operated systems and how they believe the aircraft, as an airborne vehicle, would respond when some of those systems failed. In some cases, as highlighted by the BOI report, there was a reliance on warnings and suppressants that did not exist or, conversely, no reliance was placed on warnings and drills that clearly do exist. Its a rain forest that has turned into a bag of nails. Fortunately, the front line at Kinloss is now integrated into a deep review of the existing safety case and the production of a new one, as I write.
Too little, too late, sadly.
Ed