RAF Finds Civil Overhaul More Cost Effective

IT is no idle claim that, outside of airframe and engines, the biggest supplier of equipment for the Tornado is Westland Technology of Yeovil, Somerset. The Normalair‐Garrett company provides a wide variety of life support and environmental control systems with associated valves, rotating machinery and sensitive regulation and control equipment for the aerospace industry. The Services tend to regard time expired or unserviceable pieces of such equipment as unrepairable or as throw‐away items, to be replaced when necessary by new units direct from stores. But with the need to place greater reliance on outside contractors the RAF has found out that some equipment it used to treat as disposable has come back from the product support organisations as good as new.