Originally Posted by
BVRAAM
A few guys who have left the service, including one well known blogger/podcaster who were involved have said this will get worse before it gets better - what do they mean by that?
Don’t know who you mean, but if they are recent leavers as you say then I can have a guess at what they might be on about
: retention. I will offer my own theory.
The training system itself is finally on the up, but the effects of the period just ending will be felt for some time. The problem with reaching the front line in your late twenties is that you don’t have time to establish your career before the life choices associated with your thirties start raising their heads.
In my own case, I was mid-way through my second tour, above average in the air, Q-qual’ed and had started getting promotion recommendations when I turned 30. In other words I was confident that I had a decent career ahead of me if I chose to stay in the RAF. Some contemporaries who had struggled in their first two tours and were not obviously heading for either promotion or professional aircrew status did leave in their early thirties. All are now far wealthier than me having succeeded in civvy street. What they understood was that if they deferred career decisions any longer, they’d soon become burdened with those boring financial commitments which arrive with age. Leaving would then be unaffordable until the cushion of the pension became available at 38. A long way off when you’re uncertain of your standing (and 2 years further nowadays). But enough of us had given ourselves confidence to stay and keep the show on the road.
Those age-related expectations are societal and don’t change just because of MFTS. And the nature of squadron life now is very different from the late 1990s when we were last recovering from a holding crisis. So when you reach your early thirties, and you’re mid-way through your first tour with no real idea of where you stand in the grand scheme of things, and you’re unable to do the secondary duties that might start to build a promotion profile because the squadrons are undermanned and stretched, then do you start building financial commitments that will tie you into that treadmill until age 40, or do you jump early to the City or the airlines before making those commitments? You don’t have to agree with their logic, but many are taking their futures in their hands and doing exactly that.
That’s the true time-bomb which MFTS has set for us, IMHO. I have some compassion for those affected, but given we don’t typically struggle to recruit pilots I have to admit feeling that a strategic error was made in hanging onto the recent holding generation. Redundancy payments would have paled into insignificance next to the cost of training replacements for early leavers and it might well have been better for the long-term interest of the RAF if we’d started again with a fresh young intake when the system was finally ready. Time will tell: I give it 5 years or so until we see the effects.