Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Dozy; the Comet 1 failures were a very unfortunate disaster, but calling it a "fiasco" is too harsh - and you might want to rephrase that. Facts about structural science and design that we now take for granted were simply not known back then.
Regarding use of the term "fiasco" - I wasn't talking about the design of the aircraft itself, as much as the political pressure to keep the aircraft flying when the fact that there was an unknown structural issue became apparent. This led to more accidents, rendered the Comet's reputation unrecoverable and had a severe knock-on effect to confidence within the UK's civil aviation industry.