I know nothing about CAC's testes (not a sentence I thought I'd ever one day be writing, 30 years ago as an AC) so I can't comment on the meat of this. But as an LAC I recall looking at the previously long stored VC10s flown into Abingdon by some French contractors (?) on a wing, a prayer.. and an outrageous insurance premium?

Edit. Far longer runway, I know.

Surely the ODM can be used to decide whether this is possible, or not. In the other world we use RLW (Regulated Landing Weights - aka masses), and so long as we can get below the RLW for the runway we intend to land on we can land - otherwise we can't and need to burn off or dump. RLW tables are provided that take into account mass, configuration, temperature and wind. No idea what the '10 ODM says, but if there's no mass that can stop in the distance required then careful considerations must be made as there are quite large contingencies built into the normal operating masses, and so the regulator could authorise a landing with reduced safety factors. In the other world this would be operating outside the regulations that require a destination landing distance available at a destination of 1.67 * the actual distance required.
Unless a properly conduceted performance trial was carried out I would not place any credence on 300 ft remaining!!!

...what TomJoad said in post 35!

No knowledge of VC10s but you could get a Victor into Catterick (c 3300'/1000m). Interesting tale here.

The final flight of XA939 - to Catterick for fire practice - Tony Cunnane's Afterthoughts

I'm guessing the present CAS would have vetoed that one as well!

Just put a big pile of cardboard boxes at the end of the runway. Then some volleyball nets from the fire section. Then give it a boot full of nose wheel steering at 100kts and turn it off the runway on one set of wheels. If that fails then get the ski jump from the old Ark Royal so the VC10 jumps over the railway line and into the hangar where they teach airframe repair. Skid to a stop in a cloud of dust and casually brush yourself off as nothing happened. What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe it was his woosy predecessor then?

OMG. Thank goodness I retired in 1983. Don't believe this thread!!!

Bob C

That would certainly explain things. Leave a hand grenade and hide the pin. On the face of it, no love lost there. :E

To me, many of the comments on this thread highlight just how this site has sunk over the last few years.

"We don't know what happened, indeed we admit we don't know anything really but that wont stop us publicly lambasting a very decent VSO anyway."

Sad guys, very sad. :mad:

TTN

And into Hal Far. That was even more fun, streaming the brake chute over the sea with the runway beginning at the cliff edge. However it didn't have the satisfaction of halting all traffic on the Q1 whilst a couple of "dry runs" were done before the main event at Catterick.

Indeed jocky, could not agree more - typified by the reply below when asked "why he had taken the decision"

But not knowing why is clearly not reason enough to mouth off at someone who cannot wrap themselves in the same anonymity as their detractor. But you are right this type of comment/thread is appearing all too frequently now on PPrune - most likely from the angry mob poster who has never seen a days Service in his life or if he had was one of the disgruntled. I suspect that the current CAS has shown more leadership by the time he gets out of bed than these misanthropes have in their entire lives.

Could be that over the past 20 years or so many of the VSOs became compliant, scared of their own shadow, political yes men who didn't stand up for their men or their Service when it mattered.

This particular CAS may well be the smartest, bravest CAS that the RAF has ever had - it remains to be seen whether he has the cojones to make brave decisions or allows himself to be sunk by a mountain of bureaucracy and dictated to by the mandarins of Whitehall.

When I left I outranked Pulford and I wasn't disgruntled with my service :=

Edited: Coincidentally, from a link on another post on this forum...

MoD spends £325m sprucing up its offices: Huge sum spent while soldiers live in dilapidated homes | Mail Online
Wasn't Pulford AMP while all this was going on?

Then act like it.:=

Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Now that the services have and use Safety management Systems of course CAS has to take a more measured view than in the past. Yes BA did land a VC10 at Cosford, but how long ago was that and at what risk? Assessment of risk to life, was probably not born then as even a glimmer of a concept and sadly it has taken the loss of many lives to change the attitudes to Flight and now Air Safety.

In the 30+ years of my flying career the number of times we gave it a go rather than properly looked at the risk were many. And yes very early on I had a swim directly as a result of poor planning and the bad attitude to safe flying and adherence to regulations prevelant in part at the time. We've moved on rapidly in the last 5-10 years and as a result flying is safer, but at times the process can appear boring, rule bound and the result of the fun police at one end of the spectrum but and equally can allow spectaculary good results when managed properly on operations. The two have rightly different levels of acceptable risk - Cosford v Bastion no contest.

On other threads we have seen complaints about poor airworthiness managment and a lack of safety consideration - here, because probably, CAS has made the right decision he's suddenly seen as lacking leadership (and no I haven't seen the evidence).

And before I'm asked, no I've never ever been in the RAF and no I don't know CAS. Just an ex Dark Blue aviator who has been around the safety world for the right and wrong reasons for a while.

A few words attributable to the new CAS in a previous existence:

I personally think the man will be good for the RAF.

Weather he was right or wrong, or indeed if he was even consulted, it's all immaterial now.

XR808 touched down for the last time at Brunters this morning. :(

gr4technie,

I nearly spat my tea over the key board! Well said sir. As for the Nimrod landing easily at COS, the crew will have been using different performance data than was used at ISK, then!

Duncs:ok:

The Sqn Cdr and Force Cdr cannot wring their hands of this decision, because they are not duty holders. Yes, they can advise the respective duty holders, but ultimately there are only 3 steps on the duty holder chain and for 2 Gp the top two of those are occupied by SH pilots. I'm not up on the technical ins-and-outs of this case, but it strikes me as a good illustration of the pressure building on the 2* AOCs as a consequence of consolidation of the command structure, coupled with implementation of the Duty Holder construct.

As we consolidate our command structure, the 2* areas are getting increasingly broad. In the specific case of 2 Gp, its AOC seems to have become permanently double-hatted as COS Ops. This, in turn, seems to have fomented a view in their Airship's manning office that AOC 2 Gp need not be a truckie (previous incumbent: Tonka WSO, current incumbent: Wokka pilot). [Idle question: is there such a thing as a 2* truckie, or do all the clever ones take PA or bugger off at their first exit option? :E]

Compare this to a previous era in which we had a 2* group for strike/attack, another for air defence, another for maritime patrol, another for transport, and so on. Those 2* AOCs were instinctive masters of their brief and were in a perfect position to issue Air Staff Orders (and, when required, issue exceptions to those orders!). Now, our three 2* groups are broad by any previous standards; 22 Group is pretty clearly today's version of Training Command and 1 Group does a good impression of a 1980s Strike Command [please note: I am not talking numbers of platforms or personnel here, just breadth of roles]. This is right and proper within the context of a smaller Service, but for me it follows that the business of the former 'Group' level of command should have been pushed further down to 1*.

Unfortunately 2 things have conspired to stop this. The first is the implementation of the Duty Holder construct; assignment of ODH responsibility to the 2* AOCs has given them a strong incentive to hold on to as many levers of power as possible (because, if they are going to hold risks as a Duty Holder, they need at least to have some relevant levers available). The second thing has been the wish (from the very top) to preserve the historic significance of the "Station Commander" and "AOC" roles during the implementation of CSR and Haddon-Cave. The two historic roles have been well-protected (in the stn cdrs' case, by assignment of the DDH responsibility, even though this can be illogical - how can there be two DDHs each for Typhoon and Tornado?). The recent creation of 1* Force Commanders does not change all that much; stn cdrs remain responsible directly to their AOCs for a number of items, including airworthiness, which makes it difficult for AOCs to meaningfully delegate any regulatory or supervisory responsibility to the 1* Force Commanders.

How can we un-bung the regulatory morass that sees seemingly tactical business escalated to CAS through a series of non-specialist officers? I see a ready-made solution in re-titling 1 Group as Strike Command, 2 Group as Transport Command, and 22 Group as Training Command, all with 2* AOC-in-Cs (keep calling them ODHs as well to keep the MAA happy). Then, one could sneakily relabel the Tornado Force as 1 Group, the Typhoon Force as 11 Group, the ISTAR Force as 18 Group, etc, all with 1* AOCs. These 1* would be the sole DDHs for their platforms and write their Group orders with the ability to hold their own risks. They would also be specialists, and would have the rank and clout to rule on matters such as landing a VC10 at Cosford (which, it seems, stn cdrs no longer have). Meanwhile the stn cdrs could go back to the business of running stations, commanding people, and dare I say going flying, rather than managing their burgeoning safety and risk-management fiefdoms.

I woke up this morning with the intention of canning this thread as I felt that, not only had its purpose been served and events overtaken the raison d'etre but that, perhaps, the present CAS had been unfairly targetted.

However, given the post above and its clear thinking I think I'll leave it up for a while.

Easy Street - excellent post and very worthy of further discussion. As to a 2* truckie, can anyone name one who made it to a command position of influence? Just asking out of interest as a non-truckie myself.