Caz, Hello again. Hope you are well.
At 4665 I am glad to see that you align yourself with the majority of Lordships who voted against the HOL committee.
Would that be the small number of lordships who sat through all the evidence and made a judgement based on reason, or those fairly large numbers of Lordships who were bussed in at the last minute, listened to no evidence and voted to a man with the Government. The more intelligent of those would tell you that "Chinook" is a North American wind and "Mull of Kintyre", a song by Paul McCartney.
"How many flying hours did the HOL committee have?" That old chesnut.
They rule on:
Medical matters. But they are not doctors.
Financial matters. But they are not economists or accountants.
Structural matters. But they are not civil engineers.
Need I go on.
So why should we as Military Aviation be exempt from their scrutiny and judgement when everyone else in the country is not?
They come to their decisions by taking evidence from a cross section of witnesses then sorting out the "wheat from the chaff."
Among the witnesses for this particular enquiry were Pullford, Day, Wratten, Crawford, Morgan, Cable, three Fellows from the RAe, Burke, Witness A and the fathers of the two pilots. I think you will find this list covers the required expertise in all aspects of the investigation. An awful lot of flying experience here also. Far more than that at the BOI.
I watched a fair ammount of the enquiry on TV, for a bunch of "dumb civilians" they asked some pretty searching questions.
What probably vexes you, is that they spotted that the majority of the AM's "facts", were "in fact" hypothesis based on the simulation.They ruled that five "facts", were not "facts".
To be fair to Sir John, he stuck to his guns on four of them, but had to concede that the "failure to select emergency power", was unproven.
Why am I telling you all this. Well you couldn't possibly know about it. If you did, you would be well aware of the evidence given by Sqn Ldr Burke. Only two days ago you said you were not.
Also, if you have not read the full HOL committee report, how come you are so critical of its findings.