I have no objection to a review of the fatigue issues with the Bulldog with regard to the change of the way the aircraft is used, however there is no getting away from the issue that cracks will start to form around the wing spar bolt holes. So some sort of inspection program is required to control this problem.
The aviation authoritys are often accused of not acting untill there is a death, at the moment a wing has not come off a Bulldog in flight and I for one would like to keep it that way.
In my view the price set by BAe for the fatigue life extention was based on what they could get away with and keep the price just below that of replacement of the RAF trainer fleet but the govenment was not buying this cost. Unfortunatly BAe did not take the hint and it took the cutting up of new Nimrods to get the mesage to BAe that the UK tax payer was no longer willing to put up with BAe's overpricing antics.
The biggest cost of the life extention program is the manufacture of the new wing bolts to make one set it would cost £30K+ but if ALL the buldog owners were to get together and buy a set each the costs would tumble to somethig affordable. The same is true for the jigs & fixings that are required to drill the holes, I would guess that the whole job could be done for £10-15K per aircraft if the owners got together and let an engineeing company set up with a contract to do a life extention program on the whole fleet.
Silvaire 1 I think the cost to owner of a wing failure is death, it is hard to put a price on that in £ or $.