Air Cadets grounded?

[tucumseh]

For the first time, I’ve seen the Duty Holder Advice Note from April 2014. Don’t understand why I missed it before. Old age. But it is immediately obvious why MoD has tried to keep this disgraceful saga under wraps.

At para 5, it lists “significant” airworthiness issues, including;

• Lack of configuration control of the Aircraft Document Set across glider maintenance sites.
• Progression of SI(T)s and MF765s not being managed effectively.
• Lack of an effective Quality Management System.

Engineers will recognise these as mandated, core components of maintaining the build standard, otherwise known as Post Design Services. The primary output of such work is a valid Safety Case, supporting the Release to Service.

In 1991 this was deemed a “waste of money”, and staff have had to fight for even minimal funding ever since. That some have been successful, or found underspends/offsets, while others haven’t, explains to a large degree why some equipment and aircraft fleets are reasonably robust, while others are grounded and scrapped. The only mandated Defence Standard has not been updated since January 1992, and was scrapped without replacement in around 2008. MoD no longer has a copy; or at least Part 2. Any reference to the work in MAA documents gets the basic definition wrong, and proceeds down a rabbit hole – exactly what happened in late 1993 when the ill-fated Chief of Defence Procurement Instructions were drafted by a few graduates in DPP(PM). I see significant similarities between these CDPIs and many MAA documents.

Other serious failings are noted, such as “independent inspections not being carried out on systems vital to the safety of the aircraft”. And, “workforce carrying out unauthorised maintenance and modifications”. These are also long standing issues. The mandated requirement for independence was removed in June 1993. The unauthorised work is an inevitable product of MF765s not being progressed. This is reminiscent of the 1992 Chinook/Puma/Wessex report in which the Director of Flight Safety made precisely the same complaints to the Chief Engineer and ACAS – citing an example whereby the Chinook pubs were so poor, maintainers were using captured Argentinian books (1982), relating to a different model of Chinook (CH-47C). They did nothing, and DFS had to repeat his complaints in further reports of 1994/6/7/8. In March 1999, CDP admitted to the Public Accounts Committee that configuration control was not maintained on Chinook (which should have immediately cleared the ZD576 pilots). The following month, after IPTs were re-formed, what configuration control money existed was robbed and diverted. (Savings at the expense of safety).

Summary – nothing new. Nimrod XV230. C130 XV179. Hawk XX177. And so on, depressing so. Every single Board of Inquiry and even Haddon-Cave’s report can be summarised – implement mandated PDS regs. It is something you learn of as an apprentice at workshops. Oh, we don’t do either anymore, and universities don’t teach it. Again, a solution emerges.