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Old 23rd Aug 2011, 08:29
  #51 (permalink)  
Agaricus bisporus
 
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It is hard to imagine how a military enquiry could apportion blame to someone who was a) not military in the strict sense, and b) not a pilot trained on type. How do you blame someone for getting a landing wrong if they aren't qualified to do it? Its not as if he was even in the formal role as a stude, and therefore within the scope of military reponsibility for his doings. As said above the Captain had signed for the aircraft and in military terms that is pretty much the end of the argument. He undoubtably felt great pressure not to overrule HRH but this is nowadays recognised as a CRM failure and similar in the broad sense to the Polish presidential accident. The Capt was apparently a QFI and "a good one" et he must have judged the landing, tailwind notwithstanding, to be achieveable and if it turned out otherwise his judgement must necessarily have been at fault from the inflexible military point of view. I can't see what else the enquity could have found, unless it wished to risk a political/protocol storm by criticising the long established and accepted right of senior Royals to fly military aircraft which was probably not within its remit, being tasked to ascertain causes and culprits only.

I think there is far too much modern revisionist thinking in many of the posts above. That is simply how things were done 20 years ago. We'd no doubt do it differently now, but that doesn't necessarily make those 20 yr old pre-political "correctness" decisions wrong.

What is wrong is some of the spiteful, and ill informed personal remarks posted here about the heir to our throne. I can only hope that they were not made by serving military personnel who have, after all, sworn an oath of loyalty to the Crown which some time in the future will belong to the subject of this thread...
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