Cows,
I sincerely apologise for not making myself sufficiently clear here. We're in some danger of getting into a conversation about 'airworthiness' and 'safety' thats been had many time in many other threads on PPrune, and that's my fault entirely. Please let me try to put it more clearly.
'Airworthiness' doesn't just 'confirm a level of safety'. It's one of the key pillars of what the MAA chose to call 'air safety'. If an aircraft's not 'airworthy', then by definition, it's not 'safe'.
Moreover, 'airworthiness' isn't the processes and activities us engineers carry out - it's the end result. That end result includes:
An aircraft at a known and understood configuration
An approved statement of operating intent and usage
A safety case, underpinned by evidence and declarations from the ADO and independent test and verification that shows that the risk of accident or failure during operation is acceptable
An RTS built on these documented outputs that clears the aircraft for service
Maintenance procedures and processes that keep the aircraft airworthy in service
A system that keeps these documents up to date as the aircraft configuration changes
I'm sorry, but an 'un-airworthy aircraft' (one that doesn't have the above outputs) simply can't ever be 'acceptably safe'. Put another way, if you can't prove that an aircraft is 'airworthy', you simply cannot state it's safe for service. This is the issue at the heart of many accidents - RTS's have been signed off without the evidence to support them.
Can I please offer a thought here - achieving 'airworthiness' isn't some arcane, complex and bureaucratic process that only engineers get worked up over and never really ends. It's a relatively straightforward and clear process, which gets done all the time by many nations and services. For a fleet of gliders, it should have been a walk in the park. The fact that the MoD and the RAF between them haven't been able to achieve this is, in my view (and I know others will disagree) the big issue here.
Best Regards as ever to those working to make airworthy aircraft for our aircrew and passengers, wherever they are...
Engines