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Old 24th Apr 2014, 06:13
  #561 (permalink)  
tucumseh
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: uk
Posts: 3,226
Received 172 Likes on 65 Posts
This forum (Military Aircrew) is like MoD in microcosm.

After spending years becoming a "Suitably Qualified and Experienced Person" (which notably excludes proven competence, but that's MoD for you) you are granted Airworthiness & Technical and Financial Approval Delegation. (Two different, but related things). Your letters of delegation spell out your legal obligation, and point you to the laws that say how long you can be imprisoned for if you fail in that obligation.

At no point does your delegation permit you to waive this obligation just because aircrew don't want you to implement the safety regulations.

Then an Unsuitable, Unqualified and Inexperienced (and incompetent) Person self-delegates and instructs you to ignore your legal obligation, ordering you to make false written declarations, exposing yourself to legal action.


When you meet your legal obligation and refuse, he has a hissy fit and runs to his boss, the very man who has granted you your delegation. The boss delegates the matter downwards and instructs the UN-SQEP to judge his own case. He rules in his own favour.

You escalate, in accordance with the regulations. At each stage you are simply going back up through the airworthiness chain, with the odd diversion into Personnel. At each stage, all the way to PUS, you are knocked back. How dare you try to keep our aircrew safe. You MUST obey the order to commit fraud. The disciplinary action taken against you stands, and will remain in your personnel record for all time.

On the occasions (plural) it happened to me, the airworthiness chain was (dis)graced by, variously, Senior Captain (RN), Commodore (RN), Retired Admiral (RN) - by now the Chief of Defence Procurement, Air Commodore and Air Vice Marshal. To be fair to the Senior Service, they only gave me a formal warning. The Junior Service threatened dismissal. The action they took was immaterial; the point is they took action against those who sought to protect aircrew, and aircrew died. The direct linkage was accepted by Haddon-Cave and Lord Philip, and various Coroners.

But, if that's who you want looking after your skin, then I'd love to be a fly on the wall if you showed your family this post and the fully verifiable evidence.
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