Redundancies
Nav A
Heard the same manning figure of 35000 down South too. Cuts already happening with a certain Wiltshire airbase due to close, a reduction in manning ratio of C130K crews to 1.5/1, early scrapping of tired C130Ks and a sell-on of of useless C130J. Plus the rumour for the few of us staying in that the aircrew retention bonus scheme has been suspended for 2004/2005. Cost-cutting now means that WSOps can change jobs by means of a correspondence course! No 12 month training required for Nimrod rearcrew and it now seems that ex-AEOps can learn how to be SH crewmen from an A$ handout.
Rumours are that there will be no enforced retirements but if there are the package will be substanially less than the one offered to us in the mid 90s.
Would you like fries with that?