What many, including MoD, choose to ignore is that Haddon-Cave was proved utterly wrong on the points I made above by Lord Philip's Mull of Kintyre Review.
Despite Haddon-Cave's nonsense about 1998 and a "golden period" under Alcock from 1991-96, Lord Philip had the common decency to acknowledge the Chinook was not airworthy and should not have been released to service by ACAS (Bagnall) in Nov 1993. In signing this release, Bagnall made a false declaration. If you care to read the evidence to both Haddon-Cave and Lord Philip, you can only be struck by the similarity throughout. Again, you don't need to beleive me; just read the MoD's own reports from the 80s and early 90s. If the Nimrod Review were a criminal trial, there would be a retrial ordered!
By the way, I have a lot of time for Tony Blackman. Like the late Ralph Kohn, he is not afraid to ignore the RAeS party line.