Flt. Lt. Sean Cunningham inquest
 

The inquest started this morning.

Report here.

There's a live synopsis of the proceedings here.

[QUOTE
and hope the inquest will provide much-needed answers about what happened that day[/QUOTE]

Not to mention access to a big wad of tax-payers cash ! That's why Irwin Mitchell are representing on a conditional fee arrangement.

Daily Telegraph link
 

Already making reading that will provoke many to adopt a "I told you so" response. It isn't making comfortable reading but sounds familiar. "Presonitis" is a word we used to use.


Red Arrows 'lacked experienced engineers' ejection seat inquest hears - Telegraph


Maybe this thread should be deleted as its an on-going court procedure?

And this is a rumour board.

Sub judice?
 

I think the onus is on participants in the ongoing legal process - the coroner, all protagonists, witnesses, and jurors - not to reveal private information from the court to a rumour website, rather than on rumour websites not to discuss matters involved.

If such confidential material should find itself here, then I reckon the moderators and operators of the site would be well advised to remove it, just as a newspaper wouldn't print it, both out of respect for the process and out of fear of being held in contempt.

If there's anyone who has valuable information that should be going to the inquest, but posts it here instead, then that would be another concern.

However, overall, this would seem to be a very natural place to find gossip and speculation about the inquest.

The Lincolnshire Echo is publishing a live commentary of the proceedings, so I hardly think there is scope for anxiety about what rumours and comments in connection with it appear here.

If you want to maximise the chances of the truth emerging, then pprune must continue to discuss court proceedings.

MoD will lie in court. That is a simple, proven fact. The direction of the Nimrod and C130 cases changed completely when these lies were exposed on pprune, and the truth presented in court the following day.

There may be an innocent explanation for Ft Lt Cunningham's death, but history should make everyone here suspicious.

Winding my neck in then.
 

Alright then I will wind it in and get on with it. Sqn Ldr Higgins is ( the way I read it as a layman) basically saying that the Red Arrows were doing too much flying over a certain period, had too few (experienced) engineers - they were over-extended but kept on with their programme anyway.
Someone should have stepped in......I read it as an insinuation that one of the engineers has made a mistake or error with the seat due to these factors.


Hey Genstabler there will be "scope for anxiety" for some poor sod in the court proceedings shortly wont there, but smugly no doubt not yourself?

Given that an inquest is public and that anyone can attend it, I think the point about not discussing things on here is, well, pointless. However, I would ask that people use common sense, respect and basic human decency when commenting to avoid distress to any involved directly. Thanks.

The words spoken at the inquest are public, and can be freely twittered by the press, but there might be submitted material that could add substantially to the coroner's insight that is not mentioned. A fuller picture of the purpose of a line of questioning, especially live, may require an awareness of the material that the coroner has reviewed before questioning the witnesses.

It's also possible that an expert in the material could more quickly piece together more insight into the events here than the coroner, who is an expert at running inquests but not likely familiar with the engineering details.

ARRSE
 

ARRSE entirely banned any discussion or debate from their website of the recent RM trial for murder until verdict was announced.

I should bite my lip, but reading the tweets

40 personnel understaffed, yet the flying programme hadn't reduced accordingly
Reliance on inexperienced first tour staff
Not enough time to look at jets with manpower available
Leave deferred because of lack of manpower

You can push and push, but sooner or later it will come back to haunt you... Whatever the outcome of this tragic accident event and the inquest, the die had been cast long before it took place.

I feel for all of those involved and feel they have been truly let down by those that should know better..

Not 'should know better',
but 'do know better, but aren't prepared to act',
which I think is a lot worse.

We just have to remember the Chinook crash and how long that took for the truth to come out !!

Hangarshuffle,

This is not a trial and there are no reporting restrictions in force. This is very different from criminal proceedings and blame is not apportioned. We should be free to discuss it but within the bounds of decency, as always.

It reminds me of Bader when he declared 242 Sqn none operational due to a spare shortage, it needed someone to do the same manning wise.. I can understand one or two down staff wise, but 40!

According to the website there are 85 staff

RAF Red Arrows - The Support Team

Now that doesn't say actual staffing or manning requirement, so they are either undermanned by nigh on 50% or 33% depending on which one.

That's sadly is or was an accident waiting to happen. :sad:

I hope they have addressed the issue.


.

Fox3,

Many do know better, but choose the coward's route to a cosy life.

Is this staffing level shortage indicative of the RAF squadron strength as a whole?

From what I know of the accident, both via the tweets from the inquest and info already in the public domain, I do not see the manpower shortage as directly related / as the principal cause?

There are 2 direct (technical) questions to be answered in the accident sequence, one of which is more likely maintenance related than the other - and already discussed at the inquest. This latter point I think will not be repeated / has now been addressed. The other / initiating factor seems to be where the inquest is targeted?

NoD

Flt. Lt. Sean Cunningham inquest
 

2 points which haven't been mentioned on here yet.
Firstly the self medication issue. Was it significant that the Flt Lt Cunningham was self medicating? Is this OK in the UK Armed Forces.

Secondly, I understand from a friend in the AAC that mobile telephones are not allowed in the cockpit and should be left at the line. But it seems as though every aviator I talk to always, always flies with their mobile phones with them.

Any significance to those 2 points ?

I've been present a few times when ejection seats have been stripped, serviced, totally re-built and installed in an aircraft. Everything is done to the book because you can't test the seat before use, and every critical check during re-build is countersigned.


I only have one question. Despite who or what (even an animal) sitting in the seat), when the black and yellow has been pulled, and the seat is clear of the aircraft, how does any amount of cough medicine, or whatever else, affect the opening of the 'chute???? That's down to the barostat surely. I would have thought user intervention of any sort at that point would be purely incidental. These seats are designed to work properly even if the user is unconscious after ejection.


I'd lay odds on the medicine angle is a cover up!

More likely just a clear fact presented to the coroner.

"Is this staffing level shortage indicative of the RAF squadron strength as a whole?"

Nutty,

In my (not inconsiderable) recent experience numbers of troops is certainly an issue, especially due to 'diversions'. However, more painful is the comparatively lower levels of experience available on the trade desks than years gone by, touched on by Sqn Ldr Higgins.

This has been caused by a number of factors - redundancies, PVR, and a misguided manning policy of moving people around after 5 years. Fine when you have larger numbers of personnel, you can absorb it, but when you are down to the bare bones anyway, each experienced guy leaving hurts a lot more. Replacements from another type takes so much time to bring on, as there's no capacity for full-on mentoring of the new guys, not the way I was inducted that's for sure.

What Sqn Ldr Higgins describes has been the norm on the FJ sqns I've known in recent years, with the pressure to keep the pilots even minimally current tangible. Every so often we see that the Reds flew more displays than ever, yet they're doing it with a smaller workforce?

Sean must have been terrified for those last seconds when he realised he'd not separated. I hope this inquest does him full justice, doesn't just end up with someone on the Reds being a sacrificial lamb, and leads to a Service culture that acknowledges the present limits of manpower and equipment and plans accordingly.

...and seized on by the media as a means of inflating the story. I doubt that self medication was a significant factor and fail to see how it could be used as a cover up for anything. Too many conspiracy theories.

It doesn't. But it does help the inquiry or inquest build a complete picture of the individual and the organisation. Same with the mobile phone. If there are instances where rules and procedures are not being adhered to it highlights a number of factors;

1. If those rules are pointless, why are they not being challenged and removed?
2. If they are valid, why are they being ignored?
3. How does the command structure view such rules and the somewhat arbitrary nature of compliance?

It's all well and good lining up the holes in the cheese to point out the MoD are crass, negligent, malfeasant and all the other things we know them to be, but that's a two-way street. The unit and the individuals will also come under that spotlight and any examples of non-standard or non-compliant behaviour will be subject to scrutiny, already under the BoI.

As an authorising officer I would ask crews to imagine how any of their actions would look to a subsequent Board of Inquiry before they did them. This is exactly what is happening here, albeit at the inquest. Minor infringements of rules, or the ignoring of rules by those entrusted to apply them, can sometimes be signs of stress, overstretch or command issues, thus they form part of the overall indication of the health of the unit.

I think you will find, it all has relevance, the seat may not have functioned as prescribed, but that is not the whole story, one accident is often a culmination of several sets of circumstances.

A pilot possibly operating under the weather and errors happening within the cockpit resulting in the seat firing.

An inexperienced engineering team, grossly undermanned, operating to tight schedules and being rushed to generate aircraft without sufficient time to do the task correctly with inadequate manuals and without breaks

A management team aware of all of these failings within the team, but failing to address them or putting a stop or a reduction in the programme until they are addressed.

A senior management team in the RAF ignoring the serious undermanning issues and pressures being exerted on the team to comply with the planned programmes.

A Government cutting back on Service personnel and overburdening them with tasks without regard to safety and operational capability, and those senior officers playing lip service to the problem without standing up for those they are supposed to lead.

Everyone of those issues lead to and compounded to make this accident happen, without learning from, understanding and addressing all of those problems, one would simply be playing lip service to an inquiry and not learning from it.
And without the inquiry and the facts being laid out for all to see and learn from, you are in effect setting a whole series of actions off again that will lead to more deaths in the future.

Here's a fact for you. In the 80's that shackle would have been tested/inspected in the ejection seat bay every 6 months. It then changed to every 12 months, then it changed to every 24 months........ no idea what it is now (they were talking 5 yrs when I left the RAF). I also believe all the unit ej seat bays are now shut down and seats are now crated up and serviced in one location. When I worked in ej seat bays (3 tours) it was not unusual to be called out to sqns for a 2nd oppinion on things the sqn armourers were not happy with, this is not possible now.

Glad I'm not working under the engineering conditions the lads have to suffer now.............

And how often did this result in a not fit for use seat being "grounded" instead of being flown?

As an Engine trade posted onto Jags at Bruggen I had to do a three day course at the Bruggen armoury on the seat, I wonder if the still do the same.

Until the cause of:

a) the initiation of the ejection and...

b) the failure of the main parachute to deploy....

...are known, speculation as to whether a mild overnight medication had any effect is inappropriate in my opinion. It may become relevant, but right now, it's not.

I have never, in 31+ years flying in the RAF, seen a ban on mobile phones in the cockpit. They should either be in Flight Mode or turned off, but the mere presence of a mobile phone, turned off, in the cockpit, is irrelevant. Perhaps the army were finding their crews were actually using them on the flight line. :eek:

Clearly they didn't have the special mobile phones that surgeons, movers & the AARC have. :rolleyes:

Could have picked a number of quotes on this thread to highlight this point, which seems so widely misunderstood...

It is not the job of an inquest to apportion guilt or blame or indeed to be seen to do so. It is the job of an inquest to establish the cause of death, or to record an open verdict and that is all. Ergo an inquest cannot dispense justice of any kind.

That's a good post by Two's In btw.

Utter nonsense. The coroner would have ordered an autopsy. The person doing it would present results. To do otherwise, would be to break the law.

One of the 'advantages' of inquests and inquiries is that a number of lessons can be learnt. Sure, there is often a very small number of causal factors but if other things can be identified..........

I'm not an FJ expert but the little nuggets that I would be looking at, irrespective of their (non) contribution to this sad accident, would include mobile phones (try using your mobile on the apron at many civil airports :eek: ), procedures for helmet visors/oxygen masks and self-medication. None of the above should be considered as criticism, it is just best practice in an industry where we should always be looking to manage risk rather than just ignoring it.

Mad Jock: And how often did this result in a not fit for use seat being "grounded" instead of being flown?

I have never known in my 36yrs, a 'not fit for use' seat being flown, who could (or would) auth that?

Sorry that's not what I was meaning I am a civi BTW who served in the army none aviation.

What I meant was if it was common that when you got called over as the expert on the seats you discovered a problem which might have slipped through if they hadn't had the onsite "expert" readily available.

A Servicing Bay staff member would tend to have a greater in depth knowledge of the seat and It's foibles, hence calling them in to give you a second opinion, you would tend to defer to that knowledge and go with their recommendation.
At the end of the day, if everything else goes t*ts up! it is that one item that is going to save a life.

It wasn't common to call them in, but it did happen occasionally to verify your feelings and offer advice to make a sound judgement.


Added, but that was when I was serving when each Station tended to have bays on Station.

Seadrills
Not if it's turned off and hence, not transmitting.

In case any of the self-professed non-experts were getting too deeply into the significance of in-cockpit mobile phones to this accident, I thought I'd point out that the ejection sequence of the Mk 10 seat involves no electric or electronic components. The system is operated entirely by gas pressure from percussion-initiated pyrotechnic cartridges (and the command ejection system in the Hawk is also gas-operated). This makes the system immune to electromagnetic interference and thus there is no way that stray mobile phone transmissions could have played a direct part in the accident chain.

Easy,

I believe that the relevance of the carrying of mobilephones is that of distraction. In my later flying career, when flying a crewaircraft I witnessed a few times crew members being distracted by incoming messages.Of course aircrew should be allowed to carry mobiles, however, the phonesshould remain switched OFF and in a pocket/bag whenever involved in theoperation of an aircraft. The same if true of other entertainment items such asiplayers.

I used to fly some operational sorties where the mobile phone issued by Ops was the pre-briefed tertiary method of comms.

It was used successfully to that effect on occasions, and somehow I doubt it had any effect on the aircraft's on board, steam driven, valve technology....

And no, it was some "special" type of mobile phone...

Biggus

You miss the point. There is a difference between theAuthorised use of a Service Issued mobile device to the random and indiscriminateuse of a private mobile. One of the problems that we faced was educating theyounger generation in what that difference is! Any unauthorised use of a mobiledevice in an aircraft MAY distract someone from their primary task. Somethingas simple as an incoming Message may cause an individual to miss a vital actionor check! If the phone is switched ON it can be the cause of an error beingmade.