Chinook - Still Hitting Back 3 (Merged)

[tucumseh]

I’m afraid a few posts, along with MoD, have missed the point entirely; probably deliberately so.

I haven’t read anything today which says FADEC was to blame for the crash. We don’t need to know what caused it; although we’d all like to.

What we have heard today is further evidence that senior officers were grossly negligent in releasing the aircraft to service in the first place. The issue over FADEC software implementation being “positively dangerous” merely casts further doubt on this unsustainable verdict. It also focuses attention on a group of people who have, to my knowledge, never been interviewed on this subject. Why are these people being protected?

Boscombe didn’t just refuse to recommend CA Release in late 1993. They did so consistently and in the strongest imaginable terms over an extraordinarily long period. The signatories to the CAR and RTS (CA and ACAS) should be asked why, given the mandated requirement to record decisions for the audit trail, the advice of Boscombe Down was ignored. And, given this rejection, whose independent advice did they seek and accept? There has to be such an audit trail.

And what of Boscombe? The implication is that MoD(PE) thought them somehow incompetent, that their advice was nonsense. Yet, they continued to be contracted/tasked to conduct their core work and to this day retain their status as world leading experts on the subject. There is something very wrong here, and the rulings of Wratten and Day are merely the tip of a very dirty iceberg. So, CA and ACAS, please explain.


From Hansard;
Lord Jacobs asked Her Majesty's Government:
Who was the Controller Aircraft who granted an Initial CA Release for the Chinook Mk2; and who was the then Assistant Chief of the Air Staff.[HL3391]
24 Jul 2000 : Column WA28
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: The Controller Aircraft who granted an Initial CA Release for the Chinook Mk2 was Sir Donald Spiers CB, TD; the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff at this time was Air Vice-Marshal A J C Bagnall OBE.


Note: the question and reply don't say ".....who signed the RTS" - an interesting omission, given the RTS is the Master document. It makes one wonder if a valid RTS was actually signed in November 1993, as stated by Adam Ingram (another Minister who has been fed a hatful of lies on this subject).