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Average age for a Regular pilot leaving RAF service..

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Average age for a Regular pilot leaving RAF service..

Old 4th Oct 2016, 15:11
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Average age for a Regular pilot leaving RAF service..

.. between April 2013 and March 2016. Anyone hazard a guess?
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 16:43
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No idea, but I left in 2003 at the age of 58.
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 17:12
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Probably early 40s.
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 17:34
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25, poor pay, pension, etc blah
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 17:43
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Mental age or actual tree-rings age....?

I was aboot 12 mentally when I left in 2014!
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 18:28
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How long does it take to get an ATPL?
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 18:39
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Al - assuming you're asking a genuine question & not looking for us to guess the correct answer, I would say anecdotally that most go in their early 30s, once they've had their fun & the Mrs starts to complain about the b**geration factor, long dets, constant turbulence etc. Whilst that's the mean there's a big spread with another mini peak at 5 years after award of PAS once the additional pension has been consolidated. A very few soldier on for the full 'career' (see the Derek Oldham thread!) All my own thoughts of course, nothing statistically based.
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 19:43
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The stats show that most pilots now leave in their early 30s - overwhelmingly so.

The number pushing to their IPP has really dropped and not just due to the diminishing quality of service. Pushing the IPP back to age 40 or 20 years has just left too much of a gap for those who traditionally may have pushed on a bit further.

The reduction in the financial reward for those that do make it to their IPP does not help either.

It's a very different world for those just 10 years or so younger than me - a point all-too-easily forgotten by our lords and masters. I'll be 46 by the time I will be let out.
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 22:42
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A good number of non-graduate pilots on back end of AFPS75 and early 05 have left or are leaving on PVR terms. That's 30-33 years old.
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 22:53
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Ken,

Genuine question. Here's the answer, just a FOI question to support a pension campaign. I asked because the answer surprised me. Reading some of the answers, I might not be the only one. Holdin' out for the RoS after IPP..?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/557313/PUBLIC_1474968216.pdf
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Old 4th Oct 2016, 23:26
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As a colleague has stated to me; he simply cannot afford to waste half of his working life to end up with a £7000 per annum pension - and that's if the goalposts don't move between now and then.

Hence his initial 6yr ROS is coming up and he'll happily take his 1200hrs, multi-jet and poke off.
Another colleague would rather take his pension and work in McDonalds rather than keep destroying his family life.

For guys of my generation, 35-42 seemed to be about average leaving ages. Now it's more like leave as soon as your initial ROS is done. So depending on holds and joining age, that could be anywhere from 27-30 yrs old.
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Old 5th Oct 2016, 06:59
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When proposing the original military accreditation system about 15 years ago, we assessed that the 'average' multi-engine pilot would hit the 2000TT/1500 as PIC in his/her mid-30s. After completing training, OCU, a co-pilot tour then a captain's tour, a QFI tour and perhaps back for an OCU instructor's tour, plus the inevitable holds and delays.

So they would have given a decent RoS and be set up for a second career if they wanted.

Although EASA assured the CAA that there would be no need to change the accreditation system, 22Gp had to know better and threw away the original military accreditation system, replacing it with something virtually worthless. So now people are back to studying for civil qualifications as soon as they can; the boss of a certain ME squadron told me that he'd be one of them, even though he was supposed to encourage people to stay in.

They also ditched the excellence of the UAS scheme, so there is virtually nowhere for novice QFIs to learn their trade these days, as the absurdity of MFTS is being phased in.

I'd be really surprised to see many people sticking it for longer than their minimum RoS these days - particularly if banished to Jockistan for most of their time.... I left at the age of 52 after 35 years of service as I couldn't stand it any longer. The bucket of $hit was becoming vastly bigger than the bucket of fun and I'd heard that they were proposing to bugger about with the pension system. That was more than enough to convince me to pull the black-and-yellow; whilst serving PVR-porridge at Binnsworth, a desk officer came into the office and said that he wished he was in my position as he knew that things would only get worse...

Last edited by BEagle; 5th Oct 2016 at 08:51.
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Old 5th Oct 2016, 09:19
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Age 28 in 2008 for me. More than enough hours to get a civvy job, had done all the fun stuff and any new tours would just be repetition. Combination of getting pissed off with the system and a view to getting on to an airline seniority list while fairly young. And it all worked out!
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Old 5th Oct 2016, 09:41
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Originally Posted by Al R
Genuine question. Here's the answer, just a FOI question to support a pension campaign. I asked because the answer surprised me. Reading some of the answers, I might not be the only one. Holdin' out for the RoS after IPP..?
No surprise in the current 'average' age as the young cannot leave due to RoS and a relatively stable number of the older generation did stay in to see the end of their AFPS75/05 pension.

When you look at the stats in more detail you can see precious few of those aged in their late 30s or early 40s have remained in, leaving a trough between them and those approaching their full pension.

Once that older generation has gone (next 5 to 10 years) we will have a very different age profile and a much higher rate of churn. The OCU system is already failing to train enough to replace the exit rate so nobody at Air is sure how we will maintain anything like manning balance, let alone acheiving the required number of suitably qualified & experienced pilots/aircrew.

The new employment model seeks a younger workforce that leaves well-ahead of expensive pension provisions. For the majority in the armed forces this model works well. Unfortunately it completely guts those areas that require more specialist and difficult to acquire skills. Squeezing our people dry does not help matters either - if you need a respite tour than there are few options beyond leaving.
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Old 5th Oct 2016, 10:22
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It also leaves a very much smaller pool of talent to fill the 'top jobs' ... if indeed the appropriate talent still exists.

I vividly recall the peaks and troughs of our small ATC Branch* over the years, as our wartime aircrew [filling the most senior posts] disappeared, generating a surge of younger senior officers ... who then blocked promotions for a decade or so. Then the redundancy packages of the early 90s saw a flood of exits at senior ranks, leading to a further surge of promotions which, IMO, pulled some less than stellar talent up to the top.

* Used to be 1 x Air Cdre, 4-6 Gp Capt, ~32 Wg Cdr, ~150 Sqn Ldr. It was pretty easy to identify who was going to be promoted next
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Old 6th Oct 2016, 21:34
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I think 42 is not a surprising average given that it includes a large cadre of full career senior officers. Perhaps a more telling statistic would be how many operational hours are flown per pilot....i.e. excluding instructional hours to give a measure of average experience in role. That would be a shockingly low figure I'll wager.
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Old 7th Oct 2016, 21:21
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30 - after 12 years. Perfect!!
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