If as you say, bluepilot, then the RAF is right and truly up the creek.
Saddled with an airplane that they did not desire, cannot maintain (properly, even though other airlines did so with complete success
) so...press on to do the best they can.
NB.
You might be interested in knowing...SaudiArabian operated 16 of the type (-200's) for many years, and when I was there, the dispatch rate was...98+ percent, year after year.
The reason was quite simple.
Adequate spares holding, TWA-trained ground engineers, and...using the FIRM code method of reporting snags....this saved huge amounts of time and ensured dispatch reliability.
And...operating the fine Lockheed airplane, by the Lockheed
book, not some off the wall dreamed-up Brit (RAF or otherwise) total nonsense.
