Never felt the need to post until now but I needed to vent my spleen on some of the useful, but predominantly unhelpful, drivel posted to date. I like to think of myself as someone that does give a toss about the pax I deal with so forgive me if I take some of the previous posts personally. The Mov organisation (Army and RAF) is a 'service provider' to the rest of the military, and predominantly the fighting arms. Personal experience shows me that the system for getting people and kit from A to B works well most of the time despite the enormous challenges often faced with the equipment we have and the places we go to. No civilian loggie organisation has the same scale of challenges placed upon it. Unfortunately the system falls down occasionally and our job as 'Movers' is to recover that system with the minimal inconvenience to our 'customers' (horrible word). Reading the last 5(!) pages, I'm frustrated to see that we don't always do as well as we should. Give the trade some slack unless you have something constructive and / or factual to say. I am a strong believer that alot of the 'problems' are caused by a lack of understanding on both sides. Be you aircrew or engineer, if you have a problem then please talk it through with your Movements colleagues (yes, colleagues) rather than just ranting in the bar later, you may get somewhere.
Nooky, you've just answered your earlier point about the USAF's policy to onload / offload at the drop of a hat; they throw more and more manpower at the problems until it works. We do not have that luxury. Where we lack in manpower though, the RAF makes up with adaptability which is why we can turnaround ac with a 3 man UKMAMS team and an ALM yet the USAF would require at least treble that (3 x ALM per C17, drivers that are vehicle specific etc).
Lineslime, the GEs, SVCs and techies that I have worked with on the AT fleet have generally all been good blokes without big chips on their shoulders ('C130 Techie's' objective and fair posts are a good example) so what's happened to you? As you know, SOP for lowering the ramp on a Herc is to check the nosebay first; I have never seen anyone fail to do this properly, although it could conceivably (REMOTE possibility) happen. Rather than continuing the mudslinging (and ruining my good impression of Lineys), can I suggest that next time you plan to play with the nosewheel, you collar the Mov NCO and let him know first as a fail safe.
MightyGem, unless you can offer objective comment or factual examples please don't slag off an entire trade group based on a whimsical afterthought.
Cheers, rant over.