Jindabyne – I don’t see the point in your post at 1012. Are you saying that because the bloke is a professional, whether or not a dreaded trade unionist and therefore a not to be trusted lefty, and maybe knows the facts he should not put his views down? Perhaps we should restrict comments on this site to Akula and his well-informed opinions.
Having read through this thread I seem to find three main reasons for having a rant against the firemen.
Firstly they sleep, or rest on, night duty. Excuse me but don’t RAF stations let the ops support staff rest, or even lay down on camp beds or spare rooms in the mess whilst no night flying going off? Where is the safety eqpt squipper or MT driver during these hours or even your own station fire service?
Secondly they should be a 24 hour a day service like everyone else. I would say to the correspondent from ISK that up there they, along with every UK flying station, will have sqn aircraft plus crew and ground support personnel deployed to some very nasty and unpleasant places over Xmas and New Year plus the duty Sqn and support personnel. However, the MAJORITY of the station will be on a 2 week standown with only a skeleton staff. That’s how we worked with QRA and SAR. It certainly worked that way through Gulf One when I had Xmas and New year somewhere very sunny whilst the Wg Cdr scribbly next door had a very pleasant 2 weeks off. So everyone does, if possible, treat Public Holidays as different.
Finally they get paid enough already and probably much more than some other trades/professions who really deserve it. A close friend of mine is an RAF Sqn Ldr who has not been near an aeroplane in nearly 10 years. All his positions are of course "Flying Rlated". Would anyone like to compare, or even justify, his Flying Pay with that of the total pay of a nurse or junior doctor (on his 36/72 hour shift!) at our local hospital who will be treating him in casualty should he ever need their services.