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The press releases for the L3/MoD contract referred to ‘100 students over three years’ for multi-engine flying, commencing in August 2018. They will have done elementary and basic flying training. Their L3 course is touted as ‘similar to CPL/IR with MCC.’
On the published numbers, that would suggest something like - Six or eight students on a four month course of 60 hours, with a course joining every two months. That would barely fit with the report above, that there are already two RAF courses running at Bournemouth, so perhaps an early surge has been agreed on the grounds of national security. Given also the apparent temporary shortage of DA42’s and instructors, that would clearly mitigate against the civilian licence candidates who have to provide from their own resources.
The problem for the RAF is that the competition for ‘ME flying training’ that L3 won, must have been initiated several months ago. This might be either to fill a perceived shortfall of contracted capacity within the existing MFTS arrangements, or because of an ‘unanticipated’ additional requirement for ME pilots because of recent changes to RAF equipment plans. Either way, one wonders why they did not simply try to expand the existing MFTS contract on the Phenom 200, bearing in mind the decision to go outside the established MFTS would have been made before the little bit of Phenom embarrassment in July.
So - Is anyone please able to say
roughly - - How many RAF students are on each separate RAF course at L3 ?
- How long each course is planned or expected to last ?
- What the course interval might be ?
LFH
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