As Viking is probably reading thus let me make it absolutely clear that I was certainly not sneering at anyone, thats nonsense. Nor am I saying that things were safer in our day, they certainly were not, that was my point. We lost Lightnings at a dreadful rate, mainly reheat fires, the Canberra, a big Jet Provost on two but was a potential killer on one, killing even the Marham (Wyton ?) station commander near the end of its career in an asymmetric accident, to name just two. It gave me two nasty frights with engine failures at critical times, both outside ejection seat limits.
The number of Meteors lost in the '50s too, was truly dreadful, over 800.
A lot more Gnats were lost at Valley than Hawks, in which I have had a couple of flights, including XX310 now a Reds aircraft, Vampire T11s, on which I trained, too. Modern aircraft, civil and military, are vastly safer and more reliable than we had in the 60s but that is no reason to relax safety standards, and certainly not a reason to ignore the hard earned experience of your predecessors. I can still remember many aspects of my own ejection when not everything went exactly to plan.
I don't sneer at anyone and certainly not in a dreadful accident such as this.
But I will make one thing clear. As a former airline air safety officer and a member of the U.K. Flight safety committee, including two years as its Vice Chair, I Absolutely believe that if you are serious about safety you have to be brutally honest, no sacred cows, no, or as little emotion as possible, you need to get at the truth in order to prevent a recurrence.
I have no idea how the current "safety reporting system" works in the modern RAF, it seems to have some problems, but in civil aviation we created a "just culture" system. Creating it was hard work but it has created an incredibly high standard of safety in civil ops. The RAF may well have something to learn from it.
And just for Vikings point , I well know the personal effect of a fatality on families. My wife's sister was killed in an aircraft accident in which her brother in law, the pilot taking off at their farm strip, and their child survived . I have seen first hand the effects on the family, particularly the parents, it was truly dreadful not least because my father in law pulled. His dead daughter from the wreckage. . We are still unsure of the root cause but there are never any reasons not to try and get at the truth, human factors or technical, in order to prevent a recurrence and I know my parents in law shared that view.
So, of course I would hate to be in the situation you suggest, but is my absolutely sincerest wish that Sean' s loss will not be totally in vain if it prevents a recurrence.
Last edited by RetiredBA/BY; 23rd Jan 2017 at 08:44.