Originally Posted by
onlyme
Is it just me or has this thread long since drifted away from its title? Interesting stuff but not much to do with Air Cadets being grounded.
Shall we move on?
There is very little to be said about the grounding. For a fleet of in the region of 100 gliders spread around the country to all be grounded must have taken a systemic failure from the top to the bottom of the organisation - only the Cadets are blameless.
It would have happened whatever the gliders were. Some of them are being 'recovered' e.g. minutely inspected and work done as required, paperwork correct and up-today and are starting to emerge and fly again.
The big question I don't think I've seen addressed is what has been done to ensure yet another systemic top to bottom failure doesn't happen now the gliders are fit to fly again.
If it hasn't been addressed the tax payer will simply end up paying again.
Additionally the ATC seem to have made it as hard as possible for cadets to get an air experience at a BGA club - my club has no problems with an air experience day or evening for a local school but the ATC gold-plated their requirements, plus seemed incapable of doing the arranging doing the winter so we could fit it in with our other summer flying.
As far as I know none of the individual units had more gliders than the largest clubs so keeping on top of maintenance & paperwork should not have been beyond them.