Originally Posted by
rattman
Interesting is the available rate due to announcement they were retiring the aircraft, if you announce you are going to retire do you start to run down the spares and maintainence on them. Seems very low compared to USAF and the 75%
The official rule is that funding decreases by 20% for each of the final 5 years. (The 5-year rule). It's seldom applied these days, not least because many announcements of OSDs are sudden. You do not compromise on maintenance, but it is accepted that there will be more in the repair pool and the active fleet will (dis)gracefully run down. In theory, safety-related funding is not affected, as under the same rules it was ring-fenced and did not change with numbers or flying hours. But it's all lumped together now, so takes a hit even though the primary task is not volume related.