CM
I asked myself why the sudden change and willingness to seek opinion from an anonymous forum. The answer must be a certain level of disquiet among the Wg Cdr's colleagues at the enormous changes going on.
Most, I believe, will be asking Why? They are certainly not told why by MoD. To understand the present, you must understand the past; how else can you be sure the failings have been corrected? At the moment, it is a blind charge toward constant change. No one wants to acknowledge that many people got it right in the past.
In time, there will be vague memories of someone screwing up on something called Nimrod. A Typhoon operator or maintainer will be thinking "Nowt to do with me then". MoD/MAA have promoted this line, compartmentalising the issues. For example, they say Chinook guys having to use Argentinean tech pubs (CHART 1992) is unrelated to Kinloss not having up to date pubs for Nimrod (DRA 1994/6, NART 1998, H-C 2009). Wrong, because both were served by one department whose funding was rundown by the very people charged with a Duty of Care. Why is that Argentinean story not well known? Because VSOs tried to bury the report, denying the existence of that Annex in the media and to Ministers.
MoD/MAA have publicly accepted all but four of H-C's recommendations, but in private still rage against anyone who attempts to meet legal obligations. A thread ran last October about the joint MAA/RAeS conference at which these same old stories were trotted out, grossly misleading everyone there. I wonder how many of Wg Cdr Spry’s readers felt properly represented?
Therefore, my posts seek to reassure the Wg Cdr that those who actually know what caused the failures, and how to fix them, wholeheartedly support the Front Line. Were it up to me, the fixes would be largely invisible to them, except you'd begin to see feedback improve, Fault Investigations would be carried out, Tech Pubs would be accurate and up to date, 765s answered in days, not years and you’d no longer find Mods that worked but weren’t safe (and vice versa); in short, all the little things that combine to maintain a stable, safe Build Standard. All mandated, all ditched in 1991-93 by the CE.
This wouldn’t cost much more. We spend huge amounts getting these things wrong. Often quite deliberately. I’d spend it getting it right. Service training, for air and ground crews, is the best in the world. That is not where the problem lies. One thing I’d do is introduce one brief talk (or handout, it is already written) into training answering the oft-asked question “How do we (front line) influence procurement?” Most will think “We can’t”, but the answer is an eye opener and after 45 mins you’ll realise the reason you don’t think you can is because of the decision to rundown airworthiness. When you see little links like this a lot falls into place.