A little bit of background with seat servicing. When hawk seats were first in service they went to the station seat bay every six months for inspection/servicing. This was then extended to twelve months, then over time twenty four months. At that point at least the seat bay staff on base could go out to the sqns and inspect and advise if there was a problem (which did increase with the 24 month servicing cycle). Then they shut down the bay's for centralised servicing and gradually lost the expertise on units. In the early years of the hawk, ejection seat maintenance training was deleted from armament technician training and seperate course introduced for those destined to work in a seat bay. This made for few trained staff which gradually got less over the years after the bay's closed. Not for one minute saying this would have made any difference whatsoever to the incident, it's just a fact, I'm sure better folks than I looked in to it and declared it good practice and saving a shed full of money.