Caz
Of course, in the cases you quote the then AOC 1Gp had evidence in which to base his overturn decision on rather than just his opinion. And in both cases the pilots lived to fly another day. Sadly, very very different to the Chinook case IMHO.
Walter
Can't speak 100% for sure regarding NI Ops but back in the 90's, before all Fast Jet stations adopted the station name as the first part of the callsign, the station trigraph (i.e the first three letters) changed on a daily basis. The last 2 numbers were generally the pilots individual callsign which he kept for the duration of the tour. Therefore in this case I would suggest that F4J was the Aldergrove callsign of the day and 40 was the Captains individual handle. For that reason I think any callsign issues leading to another sub-plot is a red herring! Please note this is my opinion having never operated either helicopters or out of Aldergrove so (RW chaps) if I'm talking hoop then let me know and I will delete!