All will be apparent in January, along with what's been done about it.

An immense amount of work has been going on by many different agencies. Suffice to say this incident in particular, has been treated with the utmost seriousness and urgency.

Rigga,


"The reason why this apparently officious Coroner is allowed to look at RAFAT Culture is because... -"

...is because he's a coroner, he doesn't need any other reason, the fact that it involves the military is neither here nor there.

Proone - You are, of course, wrong.

For a Coroner to require access he needs to be on duty - and the inquest is his reason.

Things have changed over the years !
Because there was a fatality in this case - the Aircraft/Evidence etc was under the control of the civvy cops and the investigation team and BOI members would have had to work with the civvy cops and ask for access etc.
With a fatality - it is no longer a purely military matter !

l ron...it doesn't require there to be a fatality for the police to have primacy.

House of Commons - Armed Forces - First Report

The first MPD (shortly after the accident) was, as stated earlier, to ensure the scissor shackle had a degree of freedom of movement.

As hinted in the MPD, the new MPD is not much different, but adds a technical measurement e.g. a defined minimum gap, between certain components.

Clearly the MPD(s) may be entirely coincidental to the tragic events under discussion, but I somewhat suspect not :oh:

Heathrow Harry:I do not see the CAA muscling in at all. PtoF aircraft are regulated by the CAA, and if MB have seen fit to issue leaflets affecting Flight Safety, then the CAA certainly should pass on that info to the appropriate operators ASAP. As a MPD does.

NoD

http://www.maa.mod.uk/linkedfiles/re...1/chapter1.pdf

Not sure of the relevance of the above but I found it interesting enough to quote.

I must appologise if I upset anybody whining about my flight safety issues and yes Im not Ex-RAF nor British Forces. Its good to talk though.

Cheers and safe flying,

BW

Hey bubble, no problem. Keep it up I say. :ok: You only have to look at the Wg Cdr Spry stickie thread to see very few in MoD are interested or able to answer valid questions.

dervish:- "You only have to look at the Wg Cdr Spry stickie thread to see very few in MoD are interested or able to answer valid questions."


Indeed. It is as though some think that they can learn a foreign language by merely studying a dictionary in that language. When they find that they can't they then change the meanings of the new words they have learnt to suit their purposes. In other words, pure gobbledygook. It would be amusing and entertaining, as Air Clues clearly tries hard to be, if it were not for the deadly seriousness of mangling the process of Air Safety thus.


Bubblewindow, worry not for it was not you at fault but I. At least you are interested in promoting Flight Safety, a rare trait hereabouts.

Chug,
If this was Facebook I'd "Like" that comment and write LOL after it.

Thank you Rigga, but let us be thankful that PPRuNe has no such facility, for I suspect that I would be in serious deficit of such 'Likes' I'm afraid. That perhaps is the whole point.
This isn't a popularity contest nor even a game. It is about the ultimate goal of Air Safety, ie the saving of lives and equipment so that they are available for their true purpose and not wasted in avoidable accidents. Which brings us neatly back to the thread OP...

I have met many people seeking to publicise Flight Safety on this forum and urge them them to work hard hard in their endeavours. The situation has changed beyond belief in the past 10 years and I hope that others are buoyed by this improvement stead of being dissuaded by the negative,

Chug,
I don't speak the same language as you clever guys, I don’t read Grown-Up newspapers and I don’t drink G&T’s. I only have vocational qualifications (none of those degree things) and some 38 years of experience.

But I do understand what goes on around me and I am where I am by putting the intent (not the letter) of regulations into practice. Some may call that 'doing the right thing'. I have some strong influence in some air & ground ops, maintenance, design and production organisations.

Whilst working in a relatively senior position for a large contractor I saw how bad the latter day RAF had become and decided to wait for H-C to come up with some sort of alternative path in his recommendations. If he had said he was happy with the RAF way of doing airplane stuff - I'd have resigned immediately and then looked for new work.

However good or bad you see his report, the way H-C described the way forward was (to me) a logical step on the path to MOD's redemption and I supported it (and I still do, however wrong the details of the report are/were).

Since then I've seen the MAA try to mould new regulations around their old practices and I've also seen how it can't and doesn't work. I saw what they wrote and heard what they told their Shop floor - and then I saw what they really wanted to happen and how they can't operate without (their term) 'work-arounds'.

I gave up after a few years of driving myself mad with frustration. Even now, some regulations are ignored if not recently removed because they meant actually changing a 'traditional' policy.

In my opinion the MAA is now changing the rules to revert back to where they were pre-H-C. I believe the MAA will soon become just another Dept. of MOD, more worried about its budget than doing anything right, effective or productive.

I now work with people who live for and with airworthiness and continued airworthiness, and not doing their utmost to get around 'difficult' regulations (ironically, it's my job to see what Directors want to work around - and I almost always reject it). I work where doing the right thing is normal, the easiest path and is cost effective - because that's the way it is and we budget/work to that cost.

Oh!....and you couldn't have this standard of conversation on Facebook. That’s one reason I’m on here.

Fodfather,
To which improvement are you referring? What part of MOD aviation are you working in to see that improvement?

Rigga, what an excellent post.

My own experience, while from a slightly different viewpoint, is exactly the same. MoD no longer waltzes round this issue in replies to Ministers. They quite openly confirm the old “pre-Haddon-Cave” practices (not regulations) remain acceptable. That is, inter alia, correct implementation is optional and instructions to render aircraft unsafe must be obeyed. The DE&S secretariat responsible for drafting and issuing these replies routinely quotes and upholds past rulings by 2 and 4 Stars to this effect; and, in fact, did so as recently as last week when citing a 1999 ruling by Sir Robert Walmsley, Chief of Defence Procurement. (I like to think this is where Haddon-Cave was aiming when he made his scathing remark about submariners managing airworthiness). Walmsley, lest it be forgotten, was rabidly anti-engineer, anti-airworthiness. I accept he had other distractions during his tenure (!), so equal blame lies with his 2 Stars and Director of Personnel, Resources and Development, who egged him on in his rulings. All were sufficiently stupid, or arrogant, to place these in writing. DE&S confirms the MAA support these historical rulings. The MAA were formally notified of them by two Ministers, but did nothing.


I think one point is always worth repeating. It was not the regulations that were lacking, but the implementation.



Finally, the MAA are and always have been just another MOD department. They have made no attempt to do the right thing, choosing to ignore the root cause of the problem.

Rigga - Respect.

Rigga, I can do little more than echo tuc's comments. Your post was from the heart and all the more worthy for that. If all who posted re Airworthiness and Air or Flight Safety did likewise this dialogue would be all the more valuable and effective.
I know that we disagree about the Haddon Cave Report and suspect that will not change. So be it. My problem with him is that he was given clear evidence of the deliberate destruction of the UK Military Airworthiness system and chose not only to ignore it but to characterise that time as a 'Golden Period'. That really had the imprimatur of the MOD 'advisors' that 'assisted' him in the preparation of his Report. Thus were the perpetrators of the destruction protected, thus was the solution to their subversion prevented. Despite the urgent need for a separate MAA and MAAIB (both of the MOD and of each other), by protecting those VSO's he obscured that need and recommended instead inclusion within the MOD fold. Hence history can now be repeated ad infinitum.
That is my problem with Haddon Cave, that it is his Report that is responsible for the clay man that is the MAA, and for that matter the MAAIB. So no tff, I cannot share your enthusiasm for them and what they are, but rather urge others to demand that they become what they should be, what any Air Regulator and Air Accident Investigator should be, independent of the Operator and of each other.

Gents,
Our differences on the why's and wherefore's don't detract from our unity in getting some justice done and getting some independence where it's needed.
It's all Grist to the same Millwheel.

The debate is always interesting and while there are still many things that still need to be improved and made to work better in the world of military aviation safety, I stand by the comment that a lot has changed for the better. Most of that is cultural and hard to quantify. However, by way of example, I remember organising a safety related conference in 2003 where as an SO3, I was the highest rank in the room. I couldn't even find an SO2 to do the welcome speech. A similar event 8 years later saw 2 Gp Capts fighting over the opening speech. When I first started working in safety it certainly wasn't seen by my peers as a good career move. Now 12 years later a job in safety is becoming more of a prerequisite for promotion.

A real example of improvement is to compare the old signal Flight Safety report process with what we have with ASIMS. Whilst there are some issues that the MAA might not have dealt with from the past, to suggest that they have made no attempt to do the right thing is very unfair indeed.