Martin Baker Aircraft Ltd admitted Breaching Health & Safety Laws.

[HOUSTON]

Red Arrows pilot Sean Cunningham inquest: Seat mechanism 'useless' - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-25943211

 

 

Red Arrows ejector seat firm guilty over RAF Scampton death - BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42773834

 

Edited January 22, 2018 by HOUSTON
Typo.

[HOUSTON]

At least the pilot is not at fault.

and totally surprised THEYadmitted their fault... but they must have saved what thousands of pilots lives over the years. 

 

Maybe they did not want a long and protracted court case ....

 

Anyway... life goes on .

[Truro Model Builder]

I find it hard to believe that M-B could have informed all of their customers except the British MoD. In fact, I cannot help thinking that somehow the MoD have been let off the hook here. There is a lot of very interesting discussion regarding this incident and the outcome on PPRuNe, and the MoD, it seems, are far from blameless.

 

In the end, one young man's life was suddenly and violently curtailed because somebody, somewhere in the past did not do their job properly. Unfortunately that person will never be brought to book, somebody else gets to be hung out to dry and reputations suffer, and the real reasons will be conveniently forgotten. Just like Nimrod XV230, the Mull of Kintyre Chinook and too many others.

 

[John B (Sc)]

I'd have thought the coroner would know better than to make overly dramatic statements about the ejection seat. It is by no means 'useless'.

He is not an engineer as far as I know - and really ought to think first, especially in front of the media. That is plainly a facile comment as reported. Those seats have been demonstrated as working successfully many times.

 

 

Yes, the seat, on this occasion failed to operate correctly, due to several errors. There is some evidence both of incorrect use, possibly of misunderstanding of the critical features to check for before seat entry and also of maintenance errors/misunderstandings.  The back story, which usually disguises the root cause(s) appears to involve changes in scope of use, which may have made the oversights or misunderstandings critical. It sounds, with hindsight,  as if a simple modification could have been made to avoid the final link in the change of this fatal accident.

 

It also sounds as if Martin Baker decided to take the hit on the reduced HSE charge because they could not conclusively prove  that they had notified MoD.  It sounds rather as though the MoD was at fault here, not for the first time, sadly.  A range of issues seems to be behind this, some of them engineering, some procedural.

 

i agree, Truro Model Builder; those other incidents also point strongly towards similar root causes in some ways, though the Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash had other, non airworthiness, issues involved too. 

 

(The Nimrod incident coroner also demonstrated a disappointing apparent lack of understanding of the deeper issues involved, at least with regard to the summary statements reported in the press.. Have coroners long been in the habit of sounding off on topics which they don't fully understand?  Don't they have experts alongside them to advise. It doesn't seem to me to do the reputation of the corner's court any good.)

Edited January 24, 2018 by John B (Sc)

[Simon Cornes]

It's amazing that the shackle bolt that I assume attaches the drogue to the main parachute in the head box can be 'too tight'? I suppose MB make so many seats but then they are al hand built so its odd that something was over torqued - unless it was done at a later date by an RAF safety equipment technician but that again is very unusual and in fact you wouldn't think it was possible. Very sad though and it is to be hoped that the pilot knew nothing about it.

[John B (Sc)]

17 hours ago, Simon Cornes said:

It's amazing that the shackle bolt that I assume attaches the drogue to the main parachute in the head box can be 'too tight'? I suppose MB make so many seats but then they are al hand built so its odd that something was over torqued - unless it was done at a later date by an RAF safety equipment technician but that again is very unusual and in fact you wouldn't think it was possible. Very sad though and it is to be hoped that the pilot knew nothing about it.

 

I agree. I believe it used to be standard habit for pilots to check the shackle rattled,  before sitting in the seat. I'd also have thought that a cross check should pick that up -or as someone else said, why not have a sleeve to prevent overtightening.

 

That was only one of the errors - misrigging  a strap through the (hence not fully safed) seat  handle was another more basic error. I'd have hoped F/L Cunningham would have spotted that; surely it ought to have been highlighted as a dangerous potential 'gotcha' when it was found earlier on in fleet life. Overall, this incident suggest to me deeper issues within the organisation, much more serious than a simple 'HSE' failure.  No-one is looking at root cause it seems, and the coroner badly missed a trick there. He was either strongly directed or well out of his depth.  If this was my outfit, I'd be rattling quite a few cages.  Complacency or ducking for cover at higher levels?