To regulate or not?
Nutloose said: While it all seems fine in principal, one of my major concerns from all of this is without a clear cut, laid down and cast in stone set of requirements for airworthiness, the system is open to abuse where maintenance standards in smaller companies can become driven by pure financial reasons and not safety
While FL said (apologies if I misunderstood) was to reduce prescriptive regulation.
I can see that tight regulation can be used to ensure that things are properly done and controlled. However they can also be an excuse not to go further in the line of SMS.
Loose regulation should be a gold standard where an enterprise aims at best practice and regular oversight and review.
How could safety be assured with loose regulation and tight regulation not be used as an excuse not to do something?
Now regarding safe life of components and exceeding these limits in an apparently approved (by the company) way, there would appear to be an issue on whether the safe life may be exceeded and under what circumstances.
As for being a red herring in the case of this crash, it can also, as has been averred in many previous instances, be used to show that other safety systems have not been managed correctly. In other words it is germane to the present investigation.
Finally, regarding the grounding of all Hunter jets, until the report states there was no technical issue, is there a real case for lifting that restriction?