Looks more like the rudder is fully deflected to one side to me.
Difficult to find a decent picture of it.[/quote]
You might just be right! I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.
Is an equally poor quality video here
Is the contract for engineering or the aircraft themselves up for renewal any time soon? Might be a good idea to negotiate a bit if this keeps happening!
[quote=“5432golf” post=2827][quote=“glass half empty 2” post=2824]IMO this is getting beyond a joke.
Every few months it seems the Tutors are grounded for an indefinite period.[/quote]
What’s the alternative? Continue to fly with the attitude of “well it can’t happen again…” attitude and risk lives?
Don’t be silly.[/quote]
As BF says this just seems to keeping happening with an alarming regularity, it’s not affected my sqn yet, thankfully. But if we are supposed to be an organisation that offers flying and what are using is so unreliable, maybe we should be looking at using a different aircraft.
IS this endemic across ALL Tuturs used by others, or just the ones we use? If the former, why hasn’t it been sorted globally, if just the ones we use, obviously something is not being done as it should.
In answer to the question, I never heard of the Chippy’s being grounded in 50ish years, can’t recall the if the Bulldog was or not. Maybe the solution is get Chipmunks back, I never really understood why we got rid of them in the first place, other than age.
It hasn’t affected my unit directly yet. We missed our last allocation as it was moved from an afternoon slot to a morning slot. Due to the last grounding everyone in our wing received a lessened allocation. There’s no way we can get to our nearest AEF for a morning slot seeing as it’s two and a half hours away.
5432golf wrote:
I think you may be right, looks like the field’s ploughed, so he was probably fighting to keep it upright. He’s done well to keep it on its wheels, bloke flying from waddo last year put down in a ploughed field and came to rest with the a/c on its back (granted he was flying a tail dragger).
wilf_san wrote:
More to go wrong on a constant speed prop, but shouldn’t be more prone to losing prop-blades. I’d have thought the bigger danger would be the prop becoming stuck in a feathered position (though there are fail-safe systems which will gradually push it back towards coarse should this happen).
Recurrent problems on type would suggest to me its time the RAF ditched the Grob and got some new trainers.
I spoke to some of the people who did the avionics upgrade on the Tutors and they said that the propeller blades that are used aren’t particularly reliable when as the wood is prone to splitting however from the accident report from the blade coming off in 2004 said that the hub was the problem as part of it broke off taking a blade with it. The 2004 report (PDF)
However the previous one to this the blade root was still attached and the picture on the BBC site may show a blade to the right of his Hi-Vis at about 5 o’clock (By the lower stripe on his jacket. However there doesn’t seem to be a blade at 8 o’clock.
There has been nothing issued publicly by the CAA or anyone else that I can see about the Grob 115 of any type so far, so it does look like preventative but what else are they going to do let them fly then have an incident where a cadet is onboard and then be ripped apart by the papers and any official reports that would come later?
[quote=“glass half empty 2” post=2857][
As BF says this just seems to keeping happening with an alarming regularity, it’s not affected my sqn yet, thankfully. But if we are supposed to be an organisation that offers flying and what are using is so unreliable, maybe we should be looking at using a different aircraft.[/quote]
It’s happened twice. The other groundings have been precautionary due to reported minor issues, although one, where the aircraft’s handling was involved took a little longer. Any other fault nowadays, post Nimrod report and the cadet incidents in 2009 is treated very cautiously. As people may have noticed, the RAF’s Tutors are 13 yrs old (bar the EAs), and until the August problem had not had a related issue with the prop. The props are changed fairly regularly.
Start complaing and there’s always the risk that they can turn off AEF completely.
I don’t think the flight safety culture and organisation is quite the same as it was during the Chipmunk era, even as recently as 1996.
i am surprised (unless i have missed it) that no one has made the connection with the previous incident also at Cranwell.
i mean not to make accusations but it is a common factor.
if this similar fault had occured at Cranwell and Cosford,or any other two seperate location i could understand a great fear in realiability in the fleet as a whole, but these have both occured at the same place
i am not saying that only 7AEF aircraft should be grounded, safety first get them all down and keep them grounded. it could turn out to be a common issue across all airframes and thus attention to all required.
but is there any reason why both aircraft affected are based at the same place?
it could be as simple as they fly more hours, or fly more strenuous sorties but is a connection that i immediately questioned…one for the Air investigators i guess
I am sure all factors will be taken into account during the investigation but suspect that it is simply down to the level of Tutor use at Cranwell that we have had the last 2 incidents from there. I don’t know how the airframes are divvied out at Cranwell but they have the UAS/AEF, as well as 16® and 115® squadrons
The fact that two incidents occurred at the same at one station out of 15 units - particularly as that station probably operates more Tutors than any other - is not that statistically significant. If it had been 4 or 5 in a row, then maybe.
Is there any indication that it actually was being operated by 7AEF at the time? 1230 on a Wednesday doesn’t sound that much like AEF operation to me (although it is possible).
[quote=“MattB” post=2898]The fact that two incidents occurred at the same at one station out of 15 units - particularly as that station probably operates more Tutors than any other - is not that statistically significant. If it had been 4 or 5 in a row, then maybe.
Is there any indication that it actually was being operated by 7AEF at the time? 1230 on a Wednesday doesn’t sound that much like AEF operation to me (although it is possible).[/quote]
CCF fly midweek.
Granted the Cranwell Tutors will do more hours per week, but that does not say the issue will only effect those aircraft. It may just take longer for the same issue to occur in a Tutor elsewhere.
You could (just about) take the Boeing 787 as an example. The majority of “failures” have occurred on the Japanese aircraft, which have been flying a greater number of sectors (cycles) than say the American, Polish, Indian aircraft etc. The same problems might be there, they just haven’t happened yet.
:S [quote=“MattB” post=2898]
Is there any indication that it actually was being operated by 7AEF at the time? 1230 on a Wednesday doesn’t sound that much like AEF operation to me (although it is possible).[/quote]
The EA Tutors at Cranwell are generally operated by MELIN (almost exclusively). If anything their aircraft are put under less strain as they spend a lot of time doing procedural instrument flying.
Both incidents appear very similar and have both happened at Cranwell. That can’t be seen as a surprise as Cranwell will do a lot more flying than other Tutor bases bar Wyton & Barkston. Had both failures occured, for example, at Benson, Cosford etc, then there would possibly be more read into that situation.
It’s been confirmed that a propellor blade separated from the stricken Tutor.
Apologies if someone’s already posted this, I’ve had a quick read but couldn’t see anything (I imagine most people had already worked it out anyway)
Judging by the CAA ‘registration’, G-CGKC is one of the ‘new’ batch (from 2009?) with a digital instrument panel (‘glass cockpit’).
Though I don’t know if they were new build or refurbished civvies?
Dunno what the service life of a propellor is or if the same propellor stays with the same airframe / engine forever.
[quote=“Stand Out” post=2928]It’s been confirmed that a propellor blade separated from the stricken Tutor.
Apologies if someone’s already posted this, I’ve had a quick read but couldn’t see anything (I imagine most people had already worked it out anyway)[/quote]
Confirmed where?
There’s no doubt that the RAF, or Babcock,or both, are quick to ground the entire fleet after any sort of incident, rather than waiting for the AAIB to inform the CAA of any need to do so. Thus after the last Tutor grounding, civilian G115s were not grounded. The normal thing would be to wait for the AAIB report and see if there is an AD - if so, this may be urgent (grounding the ac until it’s done) or simply mandated from the next 50-hour inspection. Only if there is an urgent flight safety implication would the AAIB make a recommendation for an immediate grounding. I suspect the same is true here, too.
However 1FTS does have good reasons for being a little twitchy about Tutor flight safety, even though both fatals in the last few years proved to be due to pilot/human factors not ac technical issues.
As to the type of props - yes, constant-speed hubs add additional points of failure. I can’t remember if the props are metal or composite (should know that!) but composite ones are prone to sudden failures with little warning, whereas metal ones are easier to inspect for fatigue (dye penetration &c) which may have a bearing. That’s a guess, though.
T
I applaud who ever is behind the grounding. Clearly there is a problem with propellers that can’t be detected on the ground.
Getting away with a forced emergency landing is pure luck after a suitable field has been chosen, as most threats to life and aircraft can’t been seen from a few thousand feet away.
Until you’ve been in that position of dead stick landings, and I don’t mean practiced forced landings (PFLs), then I think it’s the right option to ground.
An inconvenience is better than death or a disability.
It’s my understanding that this landing was in the same field as last time a blade detatched, and had actually started out as a practice emergency… What timing!
Potentially yes, but do that and the sunset jobbers at HQAC are out of “a nice little earner my son”, to paraphrase Arthur Daley, as the flying aspect of the AIR Training Corps is it’s main draw. Gliding isn’t complete replacement as it’s too fragile in terms of weather conditions and the paraphanalia to get into the air. My sqn has had 4 gliding details cancelled due to “bad weather” in 6 years, so a third of our allocation. In the same time no flying cancelled due to weather. We’ve got off the ground later, but it’s not been binned.
I don’t think that if there was a problem they’d have flown. IMO the Chippies were designed and built in a day when things were designed to last, unlike the throw away plastic age of flimsiness and over-complication we live in now.