Shaft 109 - I just answered the question from Chev. Maybe they would still be grounded maybe not.............
Innominate - the Maintenance model may or may not have changed I'm not sure. The trades were phased out because once the wood gliders had gone there was no real ongoing requirement to continue training people in those trades. Had the choice been made to continue with the wood/fabric/steel tube/fibre glass K13 then probably the trades would have continued (albeit in a reduced way) because the demand would have still been there. Government Policy was to outsource services where possible and maybe this would have fallen into that category anyway........................ so regardless of what the end airframe product had been I doubt that the old (efficient and proven quality) repair and maintenance model would have survived.
I do remember being at Syerston when MGSP existed and then when it became CGMF and ultimately contractorised. No one that I spoke to felt it was a good move particularly as I recall............... but it happened anyway. And now we reap the fallout. £1000's saved and £100'000's wasted...........and a fleet of (currently) useless aircraft.
IMHO Contractorisation is rarely about quality, but usually about saving £ or in most cases about passing responsibility for the end product to someone else so that if it goes 'belly up' they can say 'not my responsibility'. Standard risk Management has mitigations:
1. Avoid
2. Reduce
3. Transfer
4. Accept
We have focused on 1 and 3, not bothered with 2 and absolutely run away from 4.
Arc