Frelon, I dedicated my entire monthly column in Pilot magazine to this embarrasing debacle many months ago. This is what I wrote;-
" Way back in the seventies,
Britain not only had a large
air force but it also had a
sizeable Air Training Corps,
That I (and, I suspect, many
Pilot readers) joined. I had a pretty good
time as an Air Cadet, flying T-21 Sedburgh
and T-31 Kirby Cadet gliders, DH Chipmunks
and once even rode in an RAF Comet 4C
from RAE Farnborough. I also liked
shooting — anybody else remember those
ancient .450 calibre falling-block Martini-
Henry rifles from the 1880s, which had
been converted to .22? — and even quite
liked drilling on the parade ground.
However, it was the getting airborne that
really interested me, and when flying
opportunities mysteriously dried up after a
couple of years I didn’t hang around to find
out why.
Nevertheless, most of my memories of
the ATC are positive, and if my sons,
William and George expressed an interest
in joining I always thought I’d encourage
them. Of course, the RAF is but a shadow
of what it was 1975, and the Hunters,
Harriers, Lightnings, Jaguars, Phantoms,
Buccaneers, Canberras, Victors and
Vulcans are long gone. The fighters and
bombers are now the Typhoon, Tornado
and er… that’s it. As the air force has
shrunk, I imagine that opportunities for
cadets to fly have also diminished — but
even so, I thought that in 2015 cadets still
had a reasonable chance of getting
airborne in something.
Consequently I could scarcely believe my
ears when an acquaintance who is in the
ATC revealed that not only were all their
Viking T1 sailplanes grounded on April 17th,
but even in late June very few were
airworthy. “What” I queried, somewhat
incredulously “you’re telling me that it’s
taken more than eight weeks to inspect
probably the best-maintained gliders in the
country?” “No,” he replied “they were all
grounded on April 17, 2014 — it’s already
taken more than fourteen months, and
most of the fleet is still U/S! And,” he
continued “it looks like they won’t all be
ready until 2017.”
If this were a laughing matter, I’d say
that my grob was smacked (see what I did there). I don’t know what the RAF found
that made it ground the entire fleet, but
what I do know is that the Viking is a
relatively simple, composite sailplane. The
undercarriage is fixed, and it doesn’t have
flaps or an engine. What can possibly be
taking two years? (It should be borne in
mind that the rest of the world refers to
the Viking T1 as the Grob G103A Twin Acro
II – and as far as I can tell, the Grob 103A
fleet is not grounded!
A little digging soon revealed that the
problem appears to lie not with the ATC, or
even the RAF, but with the Military Aviation
Authority, or MAA. For decades the
ultimate responsibility for the maintenance
of RAF aircraft lay with the Chief Engineer,
which was a ‘three-star post’ (Air Vice-
Marshal or above) in the Air Council. After
the post was abolished (as a cost-saving
exercise) the overall quality of maintenance
was bound to suffer, because there was no
longer one individual in overall charge.
Instead, the MAA was created, and
replaced the chain of professional
responsibility which had previously existed
with a hierarchy of regulations and
procedures largely drawn from commercial
aviation and airline practice. Interestingly,
there are parallels here to be drawn with
the banking system, for you may recall that
the banks also replaced their chain of
professional responsibility (previously
exercised by local
managers) with
computer based
algorithms,
administered from
central office. Well,
the banks failed —
and the RAF
suffered the quite
unnecessary loss of
a Nimrod MR2 over Afghanistan.
Sir Charles Haddon-Cave QC headed an
inquiry into the loss of Nimrod XV230,
and his conclusions were scathing. In
particular, he observed that ‘engineering
qualifications were less of a prerequisite
for many posts [than] hitherto might have
been the case because increasing amounts
of in-service support for aircraft came
from industry and ‘generalist’ business management and financial skills and MBAs
were required more as the Armed Forces
‘modernised’ post-SDR. ‘In my view,’ he
continued ‘this was a mistaken and
blinkered approach which failed to have
regard to the highly technical and
specialist nature of aviation and aeroengineering.
Heavier-than-air machines are
different. Keeping them flying safely is
technically very complicated. A safe system
requires skilled and qualified engineers at
all levels.’
Unfortunately, it now seems that
whenever the MAA is faced by any sort of
airworthiness issue, its stock response is to
ground the type in question, and then keep
it grounded as long as possible. While this
undeniably does enhance flight safety (if
you want a good flight safety record, the
best way is clearly to not do any flying) I
suspect it’s done considerable and possibly
irrevocable damage to the ATC.
It’s all a far cry from the RAF of yore.
During the World Gliding Championship at
RAF South Cerney in 1965, the Russians
arrived with new metal sailplanes —
KAI-14s, one of which crashed during a
field landing. The pilot, Oleg Suslov was
understandably dejected, but the two RAF
officers attached to the competition, Air
Cdr Cleaver and Sqd Ldr Robertson
arranged for the wrecked aircraft to be
taken to the RAF’s No71 Maintenance Unit
at Bicester, where a
team of volunteers
from the MU and
the RAFGSA set to
with a will. Can you
imagine Oleg’s
reaction when, less
than 48 hours later,
he was presented
with a completely
rebuilt KAI-14, allowing him to re-join the
competition. When asked why he was so
generous to Cold War enemies the MU’s CO
replied “when they get back home they will
give a most impressive account of our
capability to repair and return to service a
damaged aircraft — it was worth every
penny.” Would this be possible these days?
And why can’t the MAA return simple sailplanes to service?"