It's been a wet weekend and I have been browsing PPrune (like you do), and came to the items in this thread about the incident involving ZA141. The general sentiment seems to be that the BAE crew were cowboys. Wrong on several counts. It was, in fact a joint BAE/MOD test flight. The flight trials of the tanker version were shortened to save money since so much was known about the VC10 already. As a result the program tended merely to go the the corners of the envelope already established. On the actual flight one test point was to look at the roll rate at VD (about 10% above VNE) at the max Q point where MD becomes VD, about 22000ft. This was to be done using ailerons only without the use of differential spoiler. Since spoilers could not be inhibited this could only be achieved with them out. The test point commenced at about 35000ft with a dive to achieve VM. Since the VC10 was so slippery, throttles were closed to get it to actually descend at a reasonable rate. At about 25000ft spoilers were extended as called for in the test point requirements. The nose was lowered to maintain VM to the max Q point and 30 degrees of bank applied as the point required 30 to 30 time to be recorded. Almost at once a snaking motion started which quickly increased. One pilot sensed that it was caused by the spoilers and it was agreed that they should be retracted. This immediately stopped the snaking, but the ac was now clean, nose down, no power. The only way to recover the situation was to pull out of the dive which had, by now gone way above VD (I do mean a very long way). However the elevator jacks had stalled due to the dynamic loading so it was necessary to use the TPI which it rather slower than an elevator! But it did work in the end and the ac was levelled out at about 8000ft over Wales. The crew elected to return to Filton to consider matters where it was found that a large percentage of the engine cowlings (amongst other things) were missing and the fin was badly wrinkled. You will see from the forgoing that it was not a "flutter trial" but an attempt by the powers to cut cost by not doing a full flight test programme. The incident was caused because cutting a large hole in the aft fuselage for the HDU changed the fuselage damping ratio making it totally different to the basic ac. And it WAS the spoilers that initiated the "yaw divergence". I think, therefore, it is misguided to bad mouth the crew and not a good idea in this forum which is monitored by jounos and "aviation historians" who tend to take it all as gospel truth.