Classic British Flight Sim

If you have some time have a read of this.

http://www.caa.co.za/resource%20center/ ... 9/8706.pdf

Makes the TV aircrash investgation programmes about bad servicing and maintenance look timid. And the pilot not mentioning the flame outs the previous day.

Makes one wonder if there are any repercussions onto the Vulcan operating with its bang seats.
Those type of pipe compression ferrules, pipes & fittings were defined by Martin Baker & used in TSR2, & the detailed report on them at the end shows to me that they were not tightened sufficiently in original manufacture, & for TSR2 at least the pipes & fittings seemed to be of what I would define as 'commercial quality' & seemed to have no corrosion protection. Mind you they were also not expected to have such a long life.
Why did ATC not report the in flight fire as well as the fuel venting?
As for the bang cartridges being life extended on a seemingly ad hoc nature, seems that the management & servicing personnel were inadequately trained on the whole aircraft.
I wonder if the Russian Mig flights are any better?
Keith

As a former RAF aircraft fitter I was pretty unimpressed with the catalog of 'errors' that contributed to the accident. Pity this is a public forum otherwise I would have let rip on just who was to blame here.

Nev

Maybe this just highlights why the CAA are so reluctant to allow operations of ex military aircraft in the UK.

As with everything, If the procedures had been followed, the worst that would have happened is the aircraft would have been lost. IMHO if the organisation responsible for issuing the various approvals, both to the staff and to the airframe had been more robust in their approach, none of this would have happened. Its a catalogue of errors from start to finish that resulted in someone's death.

if processes / procedures had been properly followed there is no reason why classic military aircraft cannot be operated safely on a civil register, but it requires robust enforcement.

Thank you for drawing our attention to this report. It makes particularly chilling reading for me, because my younger son flew in this aircraft about 10 months before the accident . Very, very sad . It is not all that often that I support the CAA wholeheartedly, but in this particular case they were right in that the complexity of this aircraft was well beyond what the operator and the South African regulatory authority were capable of coping with

I read that a few days ago on Pprune...It made me feel thoroughly depressed. I now feel that ejection seats should be for military use only...
And I don't think such advanced military aircraft should be allowed for civilian use.

I read it a couple of days ago... it really is a shocking report. I kind of agree with you Peter, and certainly once you get more complicated than a Hunter I have my doubts as to the operability outside of the mil... I would rather see a really well looked after example in a museum than an ac trashed and even worse a life lost.

Tonks

Just reminded me on Discovery this evening the sad tale of the Grumman amphibian that was operated by 'Chase' (not sure of the company) but it boiled down to really bad bodge repairs to the main spar. I know my father (he was a licenced engineer) back in the 70's was always having problems with ex US maintained aircraft that came over to the UK & was usually appalled at the state of them. Minimum maintenance was their ideal!!!!
Keith

The aircraft you're mentioning was the Chalk's Airways Grumman Goose that suffered and inflight wing failure several years ago. The problem is that Chalk's was operating the planes beyond their stated FAA Wing Spar life limit using sub-standard repairs to try and "extend" the lifetime that were not approved by the FAA, only a local FAA representative who didn't have the required expertise nor authority to approve the repair. There have since been approved repairs developed that will extend the life of the wing spars in a safe matter.

But even with proper repair programs, there's never enough inspectors to go around and make sure they're done right and there's always someone willing to "skate" the repairs, no matter where or who they are and it has nothing to do with cost. It's all about people being lazy.