Walter
after 17 years someone should have done the basic navigation/situation/weather analysis comprehensively.
As the RAF/MOD has not, it would surely have been worthwhile for an interested party to task a team of experts with the right mixes of experience and expertise to work on this and push for specific answers to any matters arising
If I may offer a reply, it seems there is common ground at last.
The point being made here by so many (not just your good self or dervish), for so long, is that it is incumbent upon MoD to do precisely that as part of the Board of Inquiry investigation. The regulations required proof “beyond any doubt whatsoever”.
It follows that doubts should be identified where they are thought to exist, examined and
positively eliminated as causal factors. AP3207 gives examples of such factors, for example Organisational Fault. If one does not positively eliminate, then by definition doubt remains.
Instead, what happened was Organisational Fault (i.e. doubt) was established (witnessed by a plethora of evidence in the BoI report), ignored by the BoI (perhaps because it implicated the ROs and fellow Stars of the day, such as the RAF Chief Engineer) who in turn conveniently blamed the pilots; thus diverting attention from their own deliberate failings. Deliberate, because the record shows they (RAF and MoD hierarchy) were warned as to the effect these failings were already having on Chinook and all other aircraft. For example, Inspector of Flight Safety to Chief Engineer in August 1992, swiftly followed by further cuts to safety funding which, with hindsight, now begin to look like a petulant, child-like reaction to IFS’s criticism. (It’s my toy and I’ll damn well make it unsafe if I want to, to paraphrase CE's 2i/c 3 months later). But it goes much deeper than that, because for 17 years there has been a systematic cover-up. I’m reasonably confident Lord Philip will address this issue, either in his main report or the supplementary.
Regarding your previous point about the duff FET, you could add the fact GPS Time of Day output was faulty. Not exactly indicative of a fault-free system, as claimed by MoD. One should also bear in mind this is not the only fatal accident where faulty/non-existent ToD has been cited, yet conveniently overlooked and the impact not assessed. This, too, is indicative of a Safety Management System which has irretrievably broken down, as it is a fundamental requirement to collate, assess and disseminate advice on such common factors. (The reporting, investigation and feedback obligation). Instead, the ToD failure was ignored, no action was taken and 10 years later up it popped again when, had simple rules been followed, it would not have. Perhaps not the cause of either accident but, as they say, “nibbled to death by ducks” and indicative of deep systemic failings that remain to this day.