Ralph Kohn. Your expert opinions are of course not to be taken lightly, and it would therefore be very interesting to know what you think of ACM Dalton's statement that : "In a nutshell, had the pilots not knowingly contravened the strict regulations that govern flight at low level, they could not possibly have crashed on the Mull of Kintyre as they did.
Regards JP
Or;
"In a nutshell, had those responsible for the CAR and RTS not knowingly contravened the strict regulations that govern their issue, they could not possibly have crashed on the Mull of Kintyre as they did, because the aircraft would be still undergoing test and evaluation".
JP, the pilots may or may not have been negligent, I do not know and nor can you; but the Staffs responsible for ignoring Boscombe demonstrably were.
(a) Where is the evidence they sought alternate independent advice and this persuaded them Boscombe were wrong, and,
(b) Where is the evidence of the mandated conflict resolution process whereby CA and ACAS agree the above, before CA signs the CAR and offers it to ACAS?
Given the above would have had to take place between 12th October 1993 (Boscombe's unequivocal advice NOT to grant CA Release) and 9th November 1993 (CA signing said CA Release), I can assure you the timescales are impossible. Any trials officer who has ever worked at Boscombe will tell you this, as will anyone who has ever managed an aircraft project. Especially as the baseline from which they had to conduct this 4 weeks work was only a fraction of safety critical code checked in FADEC, with hundreds of problems. Never mind the subsequent clearance work on new, affected or disturbed systems which, in October/November, would be at the mercy of winter weather and probable flight cancellations. Then the minor matter of re-booking the REG, which usually had to be done 2 years in advance, such was the call on it. And so on...........
Bottom line. JSP318 and CA Instructions were flouted and a grossly immature aircraft released to service; compounded by the order to use it for a VVIP flight. That is gross negligence.