Originally Posted by
sangiovese.
Lease back some of the old king airs, give the qfi’s some new pens and magi-boards?
or maybe not.....
You might be on to something there...
Maybe what's needed is for a VSO to establish, say, an Urgent Operational Requirement, for MEFT and contract it out. A new company staffed by recently released QFIs, flying recently released aircraft. They could of course operate from somewhere that's quiet nowadays, like Cranwell perhaps.
Such a company would of course need to charge top end market rates, in order to pay the staff enough to tempt them back (away) from where they have settled. The attraction of flying without a blue suit / secondary duties and the prospect of not being posted, might appeal to enough of them.
I'm sure that would not be cheap, but it would be effective, in a very short timescale. Feed them just some of the hundreds of trainee Pilots already in the holding system, and things are looking up already.