Sir Charles Haddon-Cave presented a review of the UK MAA airworthiness system in his investigation into the RAF Nimrod XV230 loss and fatalities in Afghanistan. One of his statements within the report...

Individual Assignment B 13
    Assessment 3
Individual Assignment B
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    Introduction
On September 2, 2006 the Nimrod XV230 having 14 onboard crew members was flying for a surveillance mission over Afghanistan, supporting the coalition forces engaged in Taliban (Irlbeck, Peled and Pretschn, 2015). The aircraft met with RAF tanker for the air to air refueling, and after 11 minutes reported a warning of under floor smoke and fire. The aircraft got exploded leaving all the crews dead. The accident was one of the biggest catastrophic losses of life in a single incident.
Purpose of report is to perform critical analysis of Haddon Cave Report, while explaining the role of leadership principle in maintaining safety and airworthiness.
Background of Haddon Cave Report
This report was based on a review and RAF Board of Enquiry to examine the broader causes of loss of XV230. The review identified the physical causes of fire and explosion as leak of fuel during air to air refueling, and later on the ignition of fuel through contact with exposed element of SCP (Supplementary Cooling Pack) duct/ Cross feed, systemic breach of military covenant and design flaws.
Fig.1 showing Crossfeed ducts of RAF Nimrod MR2. Source: Haddon-Cave (2006)
The report also diagnosed several safety related and organisational causes. The study recommended eight key areas including the four key principles to improve the airworthiness and safety of the organisation in future (Hancock, 2014).
The review identified the failure of Culture, Leadership and Priorities responsible for the loss. Multiple warning signals (like rupture of SCP duct in XV227, were taken as missed opportunities and could be taken as a wakeup call).
The Haddon Cave Report published 90 recommendations in October 2009.
Fig 2 showing continuous series of events leading to loss of XV230 (Source: Haddon-Cave, 2006)
Leading to New UK Military Airworthiness System
The review mainly focused on the inadequacies of the safety case of Nimrod designed from 2001 to 2005. The poor operational safety was identified in the conflict of interest between the commercial pressures and operational delivery, loss of technical skills and airworthiness management (Duhon, 2016). In his recommendations, Haddon Cave proposed that the Ministry of Defense should adhere to four key principles or set of values (leadership, simplicity, independence and people)for ensuring effective airworthiness and safety regime.
He emphasized on these values because he assessed conflict of interest in existing airworthiness, a lack of leadership and commitment to safety. He specified that the most common form of failure was the leadership failure. The procedures of handling the Nimrod safety case showed complete lack of leadership. The system could not spot the warning signs and signals due to weak safety culture and airworthiness of the system.
The report recognized that though the Ministry of Defense had existing policies and principles on paper, they were vulnerable to be diminished or altered by the strong organisational forces (Haddon-Cave, 2006). To implement the existing airworthiness aspirations in a better way, it was necessary to rectify the overriding principles for establishing appropriate safety culture. For restoring the confidence in Ministry of Defense, the four core principles were identified and were adhered throughout the process of designing, operating and establishing any Airworthiness Management Systems.
The principle of leadership required the presence of strong leadership from top to demonstrate active commitment to airworthiness and safety as the overriding needs (Farjoun, 2010). The Principle of Independence emphasized that independence should be present in regulatory regime, auditing and enforcement of the policy. Principle of People emphasized greater strength on people for delivering high level of airworthiness and safety. The principle of Simplicity stated that the rules and regulatory processes should be as simple as possible to make them understandable by everyone.
These four principles most significantly influenced the recommendations of Haddon Review to develop a new military Airworthiness regime (Bye, 2018). I have chosen the principle of leadership for detailing and quantifying in this report.
Leadership is the foremost priority of a successful culture of safety. The business and activities in an organisation are the extensions of the personal characteristics and traits of its leaders. The employees in any organisation work and behave in a manner that is reflected by the leaders or management. If the leader is ready to take risks, the staff will also be ready to take risk.
Importance of Leadership in maintaining airworthiness and safety
In Nimrod XV230 case, the most basic failure was the failure of leadership. The case was handled in a way that showed lack of leadership. The leadership was inefficient to identify the warnings, and weak safety culture of the Organisation. Hence, the principle of leadership is considered essential for bringing reforms.
In RAF Kinloss Management, the SO1 Engineer was removed from the station and the subordinate engineers were deployed under non specialist leadership. This change negatively affected the availability of the aircrafts.
A culture of safety can be established only by systematic assessment and identification of hazards, while taking preventive approach through audits and reviews (Azad et al., 2017). So, a chain of command was necessary for ensuring safety from the top.
The regrettable conduct in behavior of BAE System managers reflected failure in implementing efficient culture, and a breath to ethical...