Snazy

Apparently the comments of the coroner investigating the loss of life in the RAF crash a while back.

Seems a strange comment to make, or im reading it out of context.

PeteBrant

Very odd.

Does a coroner have the necessary technical knowledge to make sch an assessment.

The fact that Nimrods aren't falling out the sky every 5 minutes seems to suggest that this is a somewhat rash statement.

Snazy

Thats exactly what I thought too!
Not exactly new to the air fleet now is it.

RAF Nimrod Crash: Fleet Has 'Never Been Airworthy', Says Coroner |Sky News|UK News

Snazy

BBC quote him to say..

BBC NEWS | UK | RAF Nimrod was 'never airworthy'

PeteBrant

Well, I am quite surprised by that statement.

I did some work on Nimrod. It absolutely blew AWACS out of the water - Trouble is, that in typical British style, it was over budget and over due - But it was absolutely cutting edge.

Leslie

I presume that you did not have to operate in the aircraft Pete. How would you feel about an uninsulated hot air pipe next to where fuel could overflow. I don't call that a safe design by any reach of the imagination. We all know Murphy's Law-ie if it can happen it will do.

I am not impressed by the ALARP idea either. If you are using aircraft then they should be safe, not just reasonably so. The job is dangerous enough as it is. This effective risk taking with people's lives is just not good enough.

I do remember one or two aircraft which were just not safe to fly and we were not happy I can assure you.

Les

GC8

The Comet didnt have a cracking record either, did it?

Snazy

Les, forgive my ignorance here...
But in your opinion, from your experience, would you also support the claim that it was not an airworthy aircraft.... ever?

Iwan

Only because it had square windows which caused the problems, once they changed to regular round windows the plane was a very good one.

Problem is by then, confidence had been shattered and DeH lost out on sales to the US companies.

Leslie

In the description given by the experts Snazy, in that if the flight refuelling caused the fuel to overflow onto an uninsulated hot air pipe so that there was an obvious fire hazard, yes I would agree with the coroner's verdict. Those hot air pipes carry air from the engine compressors at very high temperatures indeed. I don't think there is any room to have a system which has the risk of such a thing happening to be allowed in service. This business of Risk Management to save money just should not be employed when there are lives at risk. Saying that it was "as safe as could be reasonably expected" is just not good enough. Liike not being prepared to spend the money to fit fire retardant in the C130 fuel tanks is another glaring example. That was another crew which lost their lives. Some very senior officers are often only too prepared to take such risks with others lives to get a job done to please the politicians and further their own careers.

Les

Hoppy

Les, your post has an unpleasant ring of truth about it But in the overall scheme of things, the running of our armed forces must be huge. I don't understand why a bit of insulation or re-reuting of dangerous pipe would really make that much difference to the overall budget. And neither would giving our troops some boots that fit or a gun that actually works

Richard.

j4ckos mate

regarding this,

we have nirmods and awacs sentry things, whats the differerence between them do they do the same job

Leslie

Nimrods go chasing submarines and things on the sea, and AWACS have a great big radar which they can use to direct operations in an air or air to ground battle or in radar defences.

Yes you are right Hoppy, it was probably largely down to lack of thought when the air refuelling was retrofitted fitted to the Nimrod. But they are strapped for cash and are reluctant to correct the problem now and say that they can circumvent the danger with different operating procedures.

Les

Sbradley

Just to add to Les' comment. Nimrod also has a humunguous communications suite which is extremely good for acting as an airborne relay and co-ordination station, especially in areas where the terrain may have a bad effect on short range comms - like mountainous regions in Afghanistan.

SB

Sbradley

Oh, and if a civilian aircraft went for design approval with some of the glaring design errors that we military types have/had to accept as part of life in a blue/green/crabfat suit then it would get thrown out without hesitation. And rightly so. Penny pinching and corner cutting is depressingly rife, whether deciding against providing body armour or decent boots to the guys on the ground or saving 1% of unit price by not fitting fire retardent to C130s. Nimrod has had at least 1 (2 I think) MLUs to extend its service life. One of which fitted the flight refuelling equipment. You'd think a couple of quid's worth of insulation would have been a sensible addition to the budget, wouldn't you?

But then, I'm not a government bean counter...

SB

DaveD

iTrader: (2)

Unfortunately, Risk Assessments are one of the best ways to prevent grounding aircraft every 5 minutes.

The principles of ALARP are not to put a 'cost' on life, but are to reasonably determine what actions can be taken to reduce risk to an acceptable level. It is true that, at an engine level, the degree of acceptable risk (determined by the severity of the risk and potential number of events per 1000 flying hours) varies between military and civil aircraft, but this is mainly due to the great difference in flying hours that are accumulated.

I don't know too much about the Nimrod incident, but I understand that the refuelling pipework was retro-fitted, and maybe, the potential consequences of this were not fully understood. I imagine that the tank vents were not designed to spill fuel. Nirmod in-flight refuelling has been stopped, which should prevent a recurrence of this type of incident.

Regarding MoD funding - I imagine everyone who deals with the MoD gets frustrated by this. However, it is sometimes supprising how many 'near misses' aren't properly reported, which could lead to appropriate mitigating action being taken before disaster strikes.

Petem95

Makes you wonder how many other aircraft in RAF service have known and potentially serious safety issues!

Shark Man

It wasn't always like that: A few things that spring to mind on civil craft over the years:

Single actuators for certain critical surface control actuators - with no redundancy.

No shuttle/safety valves on hydraulics (or they are fitted in the wrong places). OK, they have triple rudundancy for hydraulic circuits - great...but all running along side each other in areas prone to being damaged with no fail-safe shuttle valve, so no way to stop fluid loss if all three cuircuits are damaged by say, an uncontained engine failure or a control surface breaking off. (hmm reminds me of car brakes - dual circuit, but if one circuit fails, both circuits stop working ).

Inability to contain an engine failure within its casing.

Highly inflammable insulation materials.

Door safety interlocks that don't actually lock the cargo doors properly.

Fly-by-wire systems that allow inputs that are beyond the load capabilities of a control surface. Not an issue on direct-hydraulic or wire systems, as they provide resistive feedback proportional to load, giving a natural indication and feedback of the system's limits; fly-by-wire doesn't give that, so extra safe guards should be present to prevent excessive inputs due to lack of natural feedback.

Instrument/cockpit wiring that doesn't provide redundancy should one engine catastrophically fail on a twin engined aircraft damaging generator circuits/wiring. Failed warning systems/instruments on a crippled plane isn't really going to help things.

These have come about as oversights due to rushed/improper design/testing and/or cost cutting - sometimes even when the manufacturer is fully aware that it is an issue, they seem to wait until after a major inccident occurs or they are forced by aviation bodies to ground planes before they take action to remedy any critical issues (some of which they have known about from the outset).

Sbradley

Shark man, good points and well made. Especially the fly by wire point - I believe the YF-16 as was then had some problems because not only was there no direct feedback through the stick but the pilot could induce enormous loading by simply felxing his wrist. With predictable consequences...

SB

Hoppy

So, are you experts (relative to me ) saying that military aircraft are built to a lower safety standard than commercial craft?

That's news to me, and an utter disgrace. Our military forces risk their lives on our behalf (whether you agree with the mission in in hand or not) yet they are sent out with OUR kit that could actually kill them before they start, or while they are in action?

I'm speechless (for now).

Richard.

Shark Man

I wouldn't say worse, but I would say different: They both have failings usually brought about due to cost/time constaints IMHO.

One has to think, how old Nimrods are compared to the majority of civil planes and that modern planes probably are built to a higher standard than its older counterparts. Certainly the civil craft built at the same time as the Nimrod had their own problems (if it wasn't the case - aircrash investigation would only have lasted one series ).

I suppose the answer is they all should be brought up to modern standards - well, that is what is "supposed" to happening as old nimrods are being stripped and rebuilt with new wings, avionics and engines...Of course, in true British tradition its all over budget and behind schedule

Leslie

Well if you had to operate with those aircraft I think you might think differently!

Rather than use "ALARP" thinking, what is wrong with doing the job properly in the first place so that the risk factor as you say is just negated as it should be. Who the hell do these people think they are when they attempt to reduce it all to a risk factor to save money but nevertheless generate an extra chance of people losing their lives in what is a dangerous enough job in the first place. I did mention Murphy's Law earlier, which always seems to be inviolate eventually!

This business of keeping the aircraft in the air rather then fixing a problem is purely so that the effort is kept up to impress the political masters with the statistics and sod the people who actually have to undergo those risks

I wonder what you mean by inadequate "near miss reporting"? We always religiously put in accurate reports since we knew well enough that was the only way to possibly get something done about an unsafe situation. I have also been to enough flight safety meetings to know how those reports can be undermined for convenience sake or to go along with the "bean counters'" requirements.

The "solution" apparently is to stop using the hot air system during in flight refuelling rather than stop the refuelling. Bit dangerous however if you have to refuel during icing conditions though isn't it? As someone said above, would it not be a proper procedure to remove the fault in the first place? What do you think?

Les