Originally Posted by
Heathrow Harry
Plod
handing a bright new shiny jet to a bunch of pilots and asking them for their opinion is one of the oldest tricks in the book. British, French, Russian and above all US aeronautical history since 1945 is full of cases like this
And a few years later the problems appear and planes & pilots are lost and costs soar.......
"bright new shiny jet"? The F-35 has clocked up well over 50,000 flying hours since it first flew almost ten years ago. Unless you know otherwise, it has yet to suffer any significant aerial incident causing loss of life during its trials and testing. What other FJ can claim that safety record during its development?
You certainly nailed your colours to the mast early enough, though. This is from Feb 2011:
Originally Posted by
Heathrow Harry
I'm with Xerox on the fact that we'll never get an F-35 - its a boondoggle that will eventually be killed by the Yanks
We should maybe be looking at the Gripen and the F-18
"fact", eh?
Are you seriously suggesting that we should weigh your
opinion of the F-35 over that of the pilots who are flying it?