Didn't the RAF have to scrap a number of Tornado F Mk2s which were being overhauled or modified by a civilian contractor?
Nearly right. A contractor called Airwork Ltd allegedly used air chisels to take out the wing boxes - the bolts are an interfernce fit and so need to be cooled to get them out. They wrote off the centre sections of several Tornado F3s. Luckily we had some Tornado F2s in storage that had the same wing boxes and so a classic 'cut and shut' was done mating the back and front of a F3 to a F2 centre section to recover the aircraft.
All was covered in Hansard in 1993 -
Airwork Ltd. (Hansard, 26 July 1993)
Quite shocking really, but when you have a procurement system that always takes the cheapest option (or ones to save British jobs) then what do you expect? The system is doomed to failure and mediocrity beckons...
What is funny about the Airwork story is contained in the following snippet:
Following a management buy-out in 1988 Airwork became part of the Bricom Group of companies. In 1992 a contract with the RAF at St. Athan to modify a number of Tornado F3 aircraft was to have far reaching consequences for the company. Serious damage was caused to the centre fuselage of 16 aircraft during the removal of rivets. When the extent of the damage became clear the Ministry of Defence cancelled the contract with Airwork and pursued compensation from Bricom. Questions were asked in the Houses of Parliament and the reputation of Airwork, at least in the UK, was dealt a grievous blow. A multi million pound compensation settlement was eventually agreed out of court and the F3 aircraft involved were repaired by new contractors replacing the damaged centre fuselages with those from surplus F2 aircraft which had been earmarked for disposal.
Short Brothers of Belfast, which had itself been bought by the Canadian company Bombardier in 1989, acquired Airwork as a wholly owned subsidiary in November 1993 and the company became known as Bombardier Defence Services Limited. The VT Group subsequently took over the business – renaming it VT Defence - in a £30m deal in June 2000. Whilst in the UK the former Airwork element of the business now trades under the name VT Aerospace, the name and brand of Airwork is still used prominently in Oman as ‘Airwork Technical Services and Partners LLC’ where a new five year contract to support the Royal Air Force of Oman commenced in January 2005.
So Airwork became VT Aerospace and I
think they are the ones that do the work on the Grob Tutors?
Which takes me back to this recent comment:
One of the other potential contractors provides Grob Tutors to the RAF, at this they seem to be successful ( the propellor problems has been the result of a poor prop choice by others).
It's a funny old world...
The B Word