Mr Bernoulli:
I don't doubt that MoD will be manouevring, obfuscating, and I-don't-know-what-all just to set up it's smoke and mirror show over this one.
In a very uncertain world that is one thing that we may all be certain of. As BOAC points out, if W&D hadn't started an upsurge of righteous indignation all those years ago by an unforgiveable and unsubstantiated attack on the reputations of two deceased junior officers none of the scandalous shenanigans of the MOD, as the UK Military Airworthiness Authority charged with assuring the airworthiness of the Chinook HC2 and every other UK Military Aircraft, might ever have emerged. It is for this reason that I make respectful challenge to JB's statement:
......clearing the pilots' names, and given that this is what this thread was originally all about that anyway needs to be the absolute priority
When this thread was started that of course was the only priority, but we didn't know then what we all know now. It seems to me that any Professional Aviator must put Flight Safety ahead of all other considerations, even those of sympathy and empathy with the bereaved. This has always been a matter of life and death, but now it is a matter of future deaths while such a criminal and reckless body, as is the MOD, has control over the airworthiness of UK Military Aircraft. To avoid those future deaths as much as possible that control must be removed forthwith. This can only be done by placing Airworthiness Provision, and for that matter Air Accident Investigation, into the hands of separate and independent bodies, both of each other and of the MOD. I call yet again for the establishment of such an MAA and an MAAIB. Until that happens we may rely on there continuing to be avoidable accidents to unairworthy UK Military Aircraft, many of them tragically will be fatal.
Self Regulation Never Works and in Aviation It Kills!