Royal Aeronautical Society | Event | Project AirSeeker (Rivet Joint)

Is this the start of the shaping exercise.

Get your excuses in early.

NoVANav:-
Yes, BoIs find the same thing on this side of the pond. Mind you, witnesses with evidence of serious airworthiness shortcomings tend not to be called before the board despite volunteering themselves to do so. Tends to skew the outcome somewhat!

Corrona, I should have added in my reply to you that many of the facts stated in the link that dervish and I posted were included by Haddon Cave in his report, yet strangely he attributed the start date to 1998 even though the evidence was dated between 1987-96, which he bizarrely characterised as a Golden Era of Airworthiness! Now why should he do that, and why should the very foundation of the MAA be based on such contradictions?

Not that anyone knows exactly what happened to Rivet Amber anyway, but that airframe managed to bring the crew home despite the turbulence encounter...it was only when it was flown again despite visible damage to a known weak area that it mysteriously disappeared...

One trusts that all 707 derivatives had the fin attachment mod some decades ago?

For Squirrel41 and Torque...
The AMBER loss is still open to question but, according to one of the crew who was not on the flight (if I remember the last presentation I saw), discussed the lack of completion of a TCTO which might have caused a problem. Not related to anything about current RIVET JOINTS or the -135 airframe in general.

With regards to the 707 tail sections being used on the -135: When the decision to re-engine some KC-135As with TF33-PW-102 turbo-fan engines from retired 707 airliners the increased thrust also required the use of the larger, broader span, horizontal stabilizers and elevators. ALL RC-135s with turbofan engines (original build and mods) had the larger horizontals as original build. A much earlier ('50s) Boeing modification increased the original -135 "short tail" to the standard 707 height.

A piece in the Sunday Times today under the headline ...

"Safety fears ground spy plane"

The article mentions "concern" over the RAF RC-135's having single-skinned fuel pipes ... where a connection is then made in the same paragraph with the AFG 2006 Nimrod loss.

Humm ...

NoVANav,

Many thanks for that - helpful. RIP RIVET AMBER.

But I'm still at a loss why the RAF can't / won't read across the USAF's RC-135 clearance. Given the insanity of things over here at the moment, we could be offering the USAF a deal of three new RC-135s.... our munificence doesn't just extend to the USMC and cheap Harriers, you know....! :ugh: (Ok, I don't actually think that we'll bin the RJs - not even we're that stupid.)

S41

Bit off topic but as USAF flight suits were mentioned above, the RAFs own flying suit will soon look like the American one, yes, someone has finally noticed you don't wear flying scalves/cravats anymore and realised a high neckline provides better protection from flash fires..nice one CAM :)

JTO -

Thanks, very interesting. But surely this must have been known (or at least have been knowable) at the time that we decided to go down the RJ route? Presumably, the pressure on CAS is to get the jets flying, and thus to assume the risk, whilst telling the engineers to keep a very close eye on the jets. (Oh, and hope.)

This shouldn't be a major problem (until it's a problem, of course.) But on a serious point, the USAF have safely operated RJs for many years, and I presume that their fleet is monitored very carefully. Are we in effect saying that RAF engineers aren't up to this job, but USAF engineers are? Without casting aspersions, if senior folk believe that, then grounding RJs is the least of our concerns.

S41

Let's hope that a a decision is made soon. I suspect an RTS will be given when the embarrassment outweighs the risk. It was known that RTS was not going to be easy at the first acceptance meeting. At the second which was the final acceptance meeting, the IPT decided that as the platform had been in service for 35 years plus, no further testing or acceptance activity would be needed.

I can't find a link but this was discussed when MoD announced the RJ would be in the same configuration as the US version, making read across easier. Someone pointed out here this would be highly unlikely which was followed by a less bullish MoD admission that there were challenges ahead.

Squirrel 41, I'll leave JTO to address the points you make, but I'd just like to address the broader business of UK Military Airworthiness provision if I might.
Unbeknownst to me, and most of my fellow aviators at the time, a whole army of dedicated people were employed to ensure that the aircraft that I flew were airworthy (Chipmunk, Jet Provost, Hastings and Hercules in my case). Most of them were engineers, both CS and military, who ensured that these aircraft were constructed and operated iaw the UK Military Airworthiness Regulations.
The principle hurdle was the award of the Release to Service into the RAF or other UK Services. For this to happen the Controller Aircraft had to assure himself of the airworthiness of the aircraft (both in terms of construction and of operating, the latter being determined by Boscombe Down). Then and only then could the aircraft be offered for RTS which was the responsibility of ACAS, Both men had to agree and sign as such before the Scruggs Mk1 could go into Squadron service.
All that worked well, indeed worked better year by year as the system was honed by experience, until something went wrong. The something in my case was the tragic crash of a Hastings at Abingdon 6 July 1965, killing all 41 onboard. The cause was found to be the failure of the elevator outrigger bolts, thus removing all elevator control. Every RAF Hastings (not sure how many, say 60 odd?) was grounded until a repair requiring 1000s of man-hours to carry out (other problems at the tail empennage had been found as well). I was at Sydney at the time and spent the next two months, after the rest of the crew other than two groundcrew had returned to Changi, carrying out a weekly STI of starting up, taxying, shutting down the a/c. Even when I returned to Changi, as the rectification team had turned up at Kingsford-Smith, it was weeks before the Squadron was back to normal.
So that is what happened in the past. It contrasts sharply with what happened in the early 90's when the Chinook HC2 was granted an illegal RTS (CA had granted switch on only clearance, ie for ground instructional use only, the a/c was still being tested by Boscombe Down who grounded their aircraft as being "positively dangerous", and yet the a/c was already in Squadron service!). 29 people died at Mull, the BoI did not "discover" that the aircraft was grossly unairworthy (the positively dangerous bit was the FADEC coding, as well as UFCMs being experienced in 1,2,or all 3 axis!), the pilots were "found" to be Grossly Negligent, and the RAF still does not accept that they weren't. Yet this was a period that Haddon-Cave described as a Golden Period of Airworthiness!
The cover up of that scandal, that emanated from the even greater one that preceded it, of the deliberate dismantling of the airworthiness system that I described above, by sacking the majority of the engineers, CS or uniformed, who would not obey illegal orders to suborn the Regulations but sign them off as complied with anyway, continues to this day. Many of those who compromised themselves may still be in post today.
That is why the MAA cannot assure airworthiness, because it no longer knows how to. Every fleet is affected, not just the RJ, and the default solution of rewriting the Regs, grounding fleets or refusing RTS's to those that do not comply with them is a nonsense. There is now no RAF fleet that can be deemed airworthy IMHO, because the necessary system of continuous audit, both before and after entry into service, has not been maintained. Those that knew what they were doing are no longer there to do it.
What happens re the RJ, I have no idea. What must happen to the MAA and the MAAIB is to be made independent of the MOD and of each other, and then learn (via the CAA and AAIB) how to do their jobs again.

JTO-

What an informative post. Thank-you!

It always struck me that KC-135s are more Trigger's Broom than any other current aircraft I can think of - started life as a J-57 powered derivate of a the Dash-80 prototype, got a new 707 tail (see NoVANav's helpful post upthread), got two sets of new engines, reskinned wings, new(ish) cockpit and has been modified for umpteen different missions. I wondered how much of the original is actually left - and how do you go about auditing it from a standing start?

Excellent points, well made.

Amen to that.

S41

Chugalug2,

Many thanks for this- the Mull of Kintyre was before my time, so I hadn't appreciated that it didn't have a compliant RTS. Let's hope that they get it right from here on in.

S41

S41:
Can't see how the can, unless they start doing as I suggest in my last para. Can you?

JTO, the problem isn't with people so much as with the system. It was compromised, both in Regulation and Investigation, because it could be. While both systems are part of the MOD they still can be I fear. You say that the MAAIB is sorted. In what way? It is not even independent of the MAA as I understand it, let alone the MOD, or has that changed? The civvie system didn't get the way it is by chance, but of necessity. Operator, Regulator, and Investigator must be separate and independent of each other, or things like Mull can happen again and again. They mustn't!

All well and good, but independence isn't assured by physical location, but by design. With all due respect to the present DGs of the MAA and the MAAIB, their careers and pensions are at the discretion of the operator, ie the RAF/MOD. That isn't independence in my book. Of course the MAAIB and MAA must be manned by Service personnel, they can't possibly function otherwise, but they must be established outside of the MOD and headed by civilian DGs. That is independence. "Effective" independence is not. :sad:

So reliable Military Air Accident Investigation is assured not by the MAAIB, but by the AAIB? In that case make the obvious change and merge the two! I know that I am making waves here, and having served myself I know the irritation caused by those outside making grandiose suggestions of what to do or not to do, but this is all about the needless waste of blood and treasure.
Whether the RAF puts its hands up to the blatant misdeeds done in its name that I described above I very much doubt, but it is out there now and in the public domain. That is why the solution to this mess cannot be the usual MOD fudge and has to not only work but be seen to work. The key to all this is independence, real guaranteed independence, just as it is with the CAA and the AAIB. The RAF in particular, as the major military air operator, has to accept that or remain forever under suspicion of exerting undue pressure on its Airworthiness and Investigating personnel. The obvious solution is for those personnel to be seconded to a civilian led regime outwith the MOD. The MAAIB set up that you describe seems perfect for that, wedded with its civilian opposite number and working with it. All it needs is for it to be the military arm of the AAIB and headed by a civilian DG, rather than of the MOD with a Service DG. I emphasise that none of this is about the people concerned. It is about the system, which must be "Mull proof"!
Ditto all the above re the MAA and CAA of course.

Chug,

I'm an outsider when it come to the engineering points, but such a system mirroring AAIB / CAA / JAA seems very much in the RAF's own interests (NB, the Service's interests are not necessarily the same as the interests of certain individuals in the RAF.) Let's hope JTO is right.

S41

Squirrel, the reason I rant on about all this (and how I long to be able not to) is that we are way past simply placing trust or hope in these matters. We all of us here know how unforgiving of such platitudes Aviation can be.

The UK Military Airworthiness System is one of Self Regulation, as is that of Military Air Accident Investigation (JTO's claims to the contrary notwithstanding). If ever there were a "British Disease" that is surely it, and we are all aware of how it has spectacularly failed in many other walks of life recently. The difference here is that:-

Self Regulation Doesn't Work and in Aviation it Kills!

I highly recommend reading the evidence to Lord Phillip. One of the AAIB investigators revealed he had not been shown relevant evidence, prompting him to seek a meeting with Phillip. I agree the AAIB are superb and so too a co-located MAAIB but investigations are only as good as the evidence they obtain or are granted access to.