Yes, I had many hours looking at the state of the aircraft at Scrapheap Challenge St. Athan as well as a good look at the 'refurbishment' of the ex-ba Supers into K4s at Filton!
The metallurgical issues were explained at Wyton during a FSTA meeting and the imperative that FSTA must not be delayed was clearly explained to all industry participants. But of course, since then, FSTA has slipped by many years.....
Although some measures were taken to reduce cyclic fatigue (such as changes to the aileron upset regime) and a revised 'allowable flight envelope' which was extraordinarily punitive for the K2, anno domini effects on the structure were unlikely to become any easier.
However, if there are any concerns that the structural integrity is now too great a risk for passenger flying (which frankly I doubt), then the same risk applies to the aircraft flying at all!
And Arty Fufkin, a good navigator is certainly an effective alternative to a robot designed to stop incompetent 2-person airliner-drivers from ramming the ground.
Widger, wrong indeed. The VC10 and VC10K are most certainly RVSM-compliant. When the revised altimetry system was fitted, every single VC10K2, K3 and K4 flew Strumble HMU runs to achieve RVSM compliance approval and the VC10C1K was given fleet approval after a few sample aircraft achieved virtually identical results.