I have watched this debate with great interest because my day job involves sustaining the continued airworthiness of a worldwide civil fleet of over 1000 aircraft of various types.
Rigga is right about the maintenance actions that might be needed to re-establish the airworthiness of an individual aircraft if its integrity is in doubt. However, before that work can be carried out there must be a design audit of the type, which is where BGG is coming from.
It is all very well pulling off all the bits from the aircraft and replacing them with overhauled items, but before that can be done the integrity of the overhaul procedures must be established. So must the sources of spare parts, especially so-called alternatives, many of which seem to get approved by a storeman and not by a design assessment process carried out by engineers.
It is only after some form of design audit has been carried out that Rigga's checks can start. I'm not sure that I can get my head around doing a design audit on a modern military aircraft type - even the prospect of doing that on one of my little civvy puddle jumpers is daunting.
If there is any doubt that the integrity of an aircraft type has been compromised then that design audit must be carried out. The question remains - can the type be allowed to continue flying until that work is completed? An external regulator like a CAA will make sure that the right decisions are taken. I fear that a self-regulator may not be remote enough from the command chain to have the bottle to do that.
Edit: have just seen Rigga's most recent post:
A key outcome of a design audit will, of course, be any required revision of the aircraft data set so that those in the field are working with correct, up-to-date and accurate data. Moreover, it is so important for the staff in the field to feed back to the designers what they find when they carry out thie work, be it unapproved repairs, unapproved modifications, new faults or errors in the aircraft data set. Without this whole loop working as one, continued airworthiness cannot be assured.
Last edited by Mandator; 2nd Aug 2010 at 23:57.