"It was the techies sitting round - hundreds of them - for much of the time. "
Well, believe it or not, sometimes our jets enjoy a good run of serviceability, so people do end up sitting around. (Or maybe somebody set up a Forward Delivery system like that at M*****, which means you wait two days for a part that comes from 100 yards up the road). Most of the time however, they don't, and people are rushed off their feet. That's why you always find "hundreds" of us on dets, to cover eventualities.
But also, we're hugely overmanned on detachments to make sure we all only have to work for 2 hours a shift; only come into work every other day; finish the rare night shift at 7pm so we can go out on the town, and stuff tomorrows programme. We even close the doors and allow essential flying only when we've got more than one job each. Only contactable via the Chief Engineer.
Or perhaps not.
Mr CH, if you want to see how much sitting around actually occurs on a fast jet squadron at the producer end feel free to stop by here for a couple of weeks. Or maybe come on a Western Vortex.
You never know, you may just be surprised. Especially when you've just handed over to the day shift for the fifth morning running.
