I'd say leave off the families and point toward the negligent.

NART
 

In July 1998, the Nimrod Airworthiness Review Team (NART) produced a report which expressed real concerns about ensuring the future airworthiness of the Nimrod fleet. Haddon-Cave touches on this report, very briefly, in his review, but fails to spell out any details and in particular fails to identify the mistakes made to that date; in fact H-C shows a relunctance to go back beyond 1998. I understand that attempts to obtain this report under FOI appear to have been "blocked" under the MoD claim that "we can not locate" it. This sounds like the Chinook story over again when the CHART report was "burried" after being produced in 1992.

DV

DV - Be carefull here fella. Having lost friends too I support your concerns and have supported your efforts on here but:

...is getting very close to calling a bunch of us on here liars. I am not & we are not. The FOI request has tumbled all the way down and we have been looking really hard to find the documents whilst trying to make the near-impossible deadline.

You & others have worked really hard to become part of the safety system - you have succeeded to the extent that you & others repeatedly draw us away from current issues whilst we are trying to ensure that these in-service aircraft are safe. Please think about what you are posting and what it means to some of us on here.

JTO,

I agree with what you say and the undoubted efforts to find the documents. One problem I am sure you face was the turnover of personnel in the intervening years.

I put in an FOI request when FOI came in and it drew a blank not least as it was something from 25 years or more back. I went back to the correspondy and suggested where they might look. A week later I got the photographs that I had asked for.

So maybe some ppruners from that period might suggest where to look.

JTO.

No, I am not calling anyone a liar, but it does seem that search methods needs to be reviewed. Let's face it, it was easily found for H-C so that he could make his case, but now this important document can not be located.

I futher understand that the "can not find" reply came just a few days after acknowlegement of the FOI request. It was some 17 working days inside the "the near-impossible deadline". It appears to be a quick response.

DV

DV - Spot on about Haddon-Cave having a copy.

Any Airworthiness report, especially one prepared after the ISD, must be held by the IPT/Project Office, Director of Flight Safety, Chief of Logistic Support, ACAS/Release to Service Authority, A&AEE and the Aircraft Design Authority, as an absolute minimum. Given the NART report was so damning (much like CHART, which makes Haddon-Cave's report look like a pat on the back), it would be inconceivable for BAeS not to have been given significant tasking to sort things out.


As the aircraft has been removed from service, and presumably most of the MoD staff redeployed, my first stop would be BAeS and Directorate of Flight Safety. And, given these reports all have a common theme - systemic failure to implement mandated regs - CAS himself should have copies, along with a brief pointing out "same old problems, yet again", in case he didn't realise it himself.

JTO:
You have just made an excellent point, which is well taken, well by me at least. An obvious solution to your dilemma, as well as that of "you and others", is that the "trying to ensure that these in-service aircraft are safe" be removed from the MOD entirely to a separate and independent Military Aviation Authority, as well as to a separate and independent Military Air Accident Investigation Board. In that way the UK Military Airfleet might well reacquire the airworthiness that it has lost with such tragic effect. If not, I suspect that I and others will go on pestering and being the bloody nuisances that we already are.

JTO, "we can not find it" does not just apply to the NART report. The BOI report into the loss of XV230 indicates that during the course of 2006 the aircraft had ONE fuel leak from a coupling. This data came from the computerised Maintenance Data System. However, a request for additional information relating to the date of the fault and its location on the aircraft could not be satisfied because "we can not find it"; even when the same search criteria was provided as that used for the BOI search. Initially MoD claimed that it would take too long to go through all XV230's documention to find the fault, until they were reminded that they had it on a computer data base.

DV

The "Directorate of Flight Safety" is actually the "Inspectorate of Flight Safety" or IFS. Sadly the single service RAF IFS at RAF Bentley Priory became the joint service Defence Aviation Safety Centre (DASC) that then became DARS (can't remember what that stood for) at RAF Northolt before being broken up into the Military Aviation Authority (MAA) accross many locations. All this took place over the space of 10 years and so the NART report from 1998 could quite easily be lost. Don't forget that 10 years ago intranet sites were just coming in and I believe that the 1998 NART report would either be paper-only or even worse on CD ROM. Certainly the Sentry Airworthiness Review of the same period was on CD ROM only with the odd paper copy.

So where could it be? Filed away with lots of paper files kept at one of the file repositories, languishing in a desk somewhere at Kinloss or the back of a filing cabinet in Flight Safety organisation, or just plain lost. Don't forget that paperwork can be destroyed if no longer required after a certain amount of years gathering dust (and rightly so, because otherwise the RAF would be drowning in paperwork following its short 93 year history).

The fact that the RAF can't find a copy doesn't surprise me. A copy might turn up, but don't hold your breath. I don't believe there is any conspiracy theory at play here or with Chinook.

LJ

Leon, Haddon-Cave had a copy of the report in 2009. On page 359 of his report he quotes from pages 13 and 30 of NART's Executive Summary.

DV

LJ

Agreed.

If someone has asked for it under FoI, surely the easy thing to do is phone H-C and say "Can we have our report back please?". That would cost quite a bit less than the £600 limit MoD often hides behind under FoI, even at BT prices.

JTO; I note that at the bottom of page 360 (foot notes) of the Haddon-Cave report he refers to notes and briefs that he has seen that discuss the NART report. So clearly in 2009 he read the main report and comments on the report, and today MoD can not locate the main report. Surely, all statements of fact made by H-C must be backed up with supporting evidence. If the NART report can not be produced then you can trash Capter 13 of the H-C report and much of the case against General Cowan and ACM Pledger.

I strongly recommend that you have another look.

DV

BGG

Sorry, my mistake. But, that being so, and that NART would be right up there in the Safety Case evidence which must be retained through-life, then all the more reason why it should be easily found.

Not only that, but it would be evidence in an ongoing investigation (Air Cdre Baber) and to destroy it would be to obstruct justice.

Chugalug2:

Perhaps inadvertently wrongly expressed but this is definitely not the answer. The MAA is a regulator and the very last thing you want is to remove responsibility for safety away from the operator to the regulator. See Cullen, Robens, reports, etc. for how previous safety cultures involved a lack of responsibility for safety on the part of operators because they believed their (only) safety responsibility was to satisfy the regulator, standards, etc. Regulators obviously bear some responsibility for safety but primary responsibility must reside with operators.


Leon Jabachjabicz:

Maybe no conspiracy theory but (like BigGreenGilbert), I think LJ goes too easy on MoD. The NART is a vital document and losing it is not acceptable.

FWIW, over the last decade, there have been a handful of times when various bits of MoD that I have written reports for have had to ask me for a copy because they can't find it. My suspicion is that individuals within MoD know where to look for things but as soon as they move out (did someone else say that high turnover in MoD was a problem!), the knowledge is lost to organisations. Even less excusable now when everything should be electronically stored and searchable (and I see no reason why the 1998 NART shouldn't be available electronically in a centralized database of Nimrod documentation).

Squidlord


I understand exactly what you are saying. In my experience, the practical problem came when addressing the concept of "Safety is everyone's concern". If you dared report a safety problem, especially in the late 80s, throughout the 90s and into the 00s, then you risked your career.

The MoD(PE) / DPA 2 Star in charge of (e.g.) Chinook and Nimrod is on record (1998) as stating that we (engineering project managers) can completely ignore functional safety, going so far as to specifically rule one can (and should) make a false declaration that such a contractual obligation has been met in full, when in fact it had been waived to save time and money. Our 4 Star, CDP, agreed in writing as have 5 Ministers for the Armed Forces and PUS. These rulings reflected those of the staffs of the RAF Chief Engineer made in the early 90s.

Given that background, little wonder MoD don't like "going there". Too many of those involved still hold senior posts at AbbeyWood. As ever, matters will improve when they leave and their replacements can order an about turn without fear or censure. To this end, Haddon-Cave but scraped the surface. It is the "ART" reports of the early/mid 90s which reveal the detail he, for whatever reason, chose not to report. They make appalling reading. You are right; they should be held electronically and every member of every PT should have copies and have the content ingrained in their memory.

Squidlord:
I'm not for one moment saying that responsibility for safety be removed from anyone, because "Flight Safety Concerns You" as we well know (or should do!). Perhaps in turn my riposte to JTO was poorly expressed in merely quoting back his words to him rather than more precisely making my point. That point is well made by tuc, i.e. that the enforcement required of a regulator must be independent to ensure full compliance with its regulations. Without that safeguard the regulations can be, and were, ignored and safety suffer. Even so safety is still the responsibility of everyone, from AC2 to ACM in the RAF as well as their counterparts in the other Armed Forces and the Civil Service. That it suffered so dramatically and tragically, when illegal orders to ignore the Regulations came down the CoC, is an indictment of all those who failed to disobey them. An easy thing to say, I know, but:
See Edmund Burke!

New Regs
 

The MAA's first tranche of new regs can be found here:

Ministry of Defence | About Defence | Corporate Publications | Air Safety and Aviation Publications | Military Aviation Authority

Lots to read...

Jimmy Jones again:

BBC News - 'Safety failure link' to Chinook and Nimrod crashes

Duncs:ok:

Great.. another thing to fight your way onto the section computer to read, assuming you can find it!!.. dont suppose there will be a hard copy available!
Please think of the guys at the workface who dont have a computer each!