Quote:
since the legal profession went to town on the safety issues connected with XV230, no one will sign off the ac until there are perceived to be no safety issues at all
So I guess that is the problem. Someone had to take a view on how likely it would be signed off in the time scale available, if the answer was " it could take some time" the current government would be left with only one decision. What would be the point in finishing off the whole production run of aeroplanes only to find 3 years later someone cannot sign them off as fit for flight because it is thought that one of the primary systems might have a risk of failure and requires all the planes gutted and refitted?
The world has changed. Its not anybodies fault the Nimrod just got zapped by the risk of litigation.
Who could reasonably argue with the logic?
bb
I think if you followed that logic we wouldn't have any aircraft flying.
One needs a pragmatic approach to safety management with engineering judgment to the fore. The problem, reiterated by Haddon-Cave, was that the perceived need to save money was allowed to over-ride engineering judgment - contrary to the regulations.
What he did not address was why there was this perceived need. He had a ridiculous pop at AML (General Sam Cowan) for implementing 5% per year savings over 4 years, while ignoring his predecessors who deliberately targeted airworthiness year after year. He did not link the gross waste of public funds reported year after year by auditors, or successive Governments' refusal to take action, to this perceived need.
If you chuck £300M down the drain on the likes of Chinook Mk3 (is it still the "Gold Standard Cock-Up" following Nimrod MRA4?), and the "Air Systems" budget doesn't change, where do you get the money from to compensate? Support mainly, because that is where we are taught up to 80% of Through Life costs occur and it is money that is often not committed years in advance, unlike capital procurement contracts. So, beancounters and other alien life-forms were allowed to slash airworthiness-related contracts to compensate for deliberate waste elsewhere. Haddon-Cave didn't go into this detail.
As I said above, given this ethos has been prevalent since 1988, there are an awful lot of project officers/managers in PE > DPA > DE&S who simply don't understand or have never experienced the concept of engineering judgment being paramount. They too readily accept rulings that it is acceptable to make something physically safe, but not functionally safe. That was a formal ruling by the Nimrod 2 Star and CDP in 1998. I mention that example, because that is what XV230 (and XV179) boiled down to.
Instead of asking what aircraft can we get rid of to compensate for this culture of waste and incompetence, I remain convinced it would be a good idea to target that waste and incompetence in the first place. Then we'd have some funding. Successive Ministers are on record as disagreeing. They are briefed by the same people who condone the waste and incompetence.