John Day was born in Gillingham, Kent, England in 1947, however during the first nine years of his life, he spent a considerable amount of time in north east India where his father worked as a tea planter.
The independent watchdog monitoring the movement of officials to companies recommended that he should wait a year before taking up his new BAE job, due to his history as head of RAF Strike Command.
The committee warned that Day "had been involved with Air Force Board decisions which would have a direct bearing on the MoD's business with BAE".
[5] In 1995, following the Chinook Helicopter Crash on the Mull of Kintyre, Day was the Reviewing Officer of the Board of Inquiry which had failed to find a cause of the accident.
[6] Following a subsequent Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry and House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report, a House of Lords Select Committee was appointed to consider all the circumstances surrounding the crash and unanimously concluded "that the reviewing officers were not justified in finding that negligence on the part of the pilots caused the aircraft to crash".