Originally Posted by
cats_five
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.
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I wonder if the organization has passed the point of no return with respect to having a flying program for air cadets. As a outsider looking in there does not appear to be any interest in the senior leadership promoting anything beyond the scenario where all existing and future air cadets are going to get is a few air experience flights.
Sadly it seems that the incompetence that created the original requirement to ground all air cadet aircraft has now combined with an extremely risk averse leadership cadre that have leveraged "Health and Safety" concerns into a defacto ban on air cadet flying training.
I contrast what is happening in the UK with the situation in Canada where a vibrant Air Cadet gliding program produces over 300 new Air Cadet fully licensed glider pilots ever year.
The one thing I have noticed is that in Canada the Air Cadet program enjoys very high support from many influential serving and retired General Officers, all of whom got there first flying lessons in an Air Cadet glider. In fact about 5 years there was a move to reduce the Air Force support to the Air Cadets which would have greatly reduced Air Cadet gliding.
The overwhelming instant opposition to this move by many important figures caused an immediate about face by the Department of National Defence.