Originally Posted by
farefield
I never flew with any women or minority ethnic pilots. I just flew with fellow pilots.
If my opinion is worth anything that is exactly right. It is worth saying, everyone encounters different challenges in life and I think the big mistake people make is to assume that their challenges are the worst imaginable. Have I experienced racism, obviously yes I have, so has almost everyone else I would imagine, but do I think that's somehow worse and more important than what what everyone else goes through, I don't know because I'm not everyone else.
Originally Posted by
Asturias56
It isn't a career path that exists on the radar of many young people these days and that's what the recruitment figures have told us for years
This is a very big problem, everyone I knew looked at me as if I had two heads. I did not know anyone who had been in the military nor did anyone I knew. A lot of people only know the military from movies, Full Metal Jacket and Jarhead, which shows that it is about having people scream in your face and basically abuse and mistreat you all day every day, for no reason. I am not silly enough to think that there is none of that in the RAF but from what I know it is probably on the other end of the scale. I have never been in the military but logically, it cannot be as horrible as the movies make it look because nobody in their right mind would do it (people do join the US marine corps and then act surprised when it's like that which I don't get, it's not a secret). But the media does just make it look like constant awful screaming and cruelty all day every day which is not helping.
Yes you could make more money else where but I don't think that is the main thing, nobody is going to apply for these "lifestyle" kind of careers unless they have a personal interest in doing it. People want to do it because it is amazing, and that's another problem. Constant reports that the whole organisation is basically a tiny version of its former self does not help. If you can't go anywhere or do anything because there's nowhere to go and nothing to do, what is the point.
Although ages ago I wrote an essay on the American airbase at Diego Garcia which is in the British Indian Ocean Territory and at least sometimes, RAF people work there as it is officially UK territory, so apparently that is a thing you can still do, and there are beautiful white coral beaches and palm trees. The only other way to get there as a civilian is to write for permission and literally sail your own boat over!