If the MoD is not yet satisfied with ZZ664 which remains parked at Waddington, why is it OK for 51 Sqn to continue to accumulate thousands of flying hours on the USAF fleet of very similar aircraft?
The question above is the one I posed in an earlier post, see #2 below....
Couple of thoughts...
- The USAF have been operating RJs for years and, AFAIK, they don't fall out of the sky on a regular basis
- The USAF operates RJs out of the UK on a daily basis - often with UK crews. Somebody must have authorised this and "taken the risk"
Although Tuc gave a very comprehensive response to my main points (thanks Tuc
) I am not sure that particular point was directly addressed.
From a pure airworthiness point of view then the current failure to progress to RTS does not stack up. Surely if there was a known issue with RJs that meant they were more likely to suffer a catastrophic failure then UK MoD would not allow them to continue to operate over the UK
and/or with UK crews. I fully realise these RJs are operated under US jurisdiction but not sure that would wash very well with Joe Public in Newmarket if one landed on his house and it was proven to be airworthiness related (and even worse if it were proven that UK SoS for Defence, Service Chiefs, etc knew about it!)
Hence my assertion in original post that any delays in Safety Case approval and RTS are NOT inherently related to lack of airworthiness but much more related to a collective unwillingness to accept the risk of an incomplete audit trail. Might be a slightly easier decision for someone to make if the basic design of the thing didn't pre-date the Ark!
As others have alluded to all of this was well known at time of procurement but some bright spark decided to accept that particular risk - can only assume he's NOT the same individual now involved in sign-off.