Originally Posted by
Timelord
This is not a question of having someone “who should clean up after them”, it is a question of highly trained and very expensive aircrew spending their time on administrative tasks that could easily be done by someone less highly trained and cheaper. This was identified as a factor in the accident in question and is a serious problem across the fast jet force(I can’t speak for other forces). As I have said elsewhere, the withdrawal of this sort of support has led to FJ aircrew regularly working 12++ hour days despite only flying 6-8/ hours a month. It is a major factor in pushing people out of the service. You could pay a couple of admin clerks and a cook / cleaner for decades for the cost of training one new pilot.
Anyway, this isn’t really the point of this thread!
so why are they Officers? Make them Junior Aviators with an appropriate pay packet.