Beagle old chap! (Covers mouth with hand and stage whispers) "Your God status is showing through!"
I know you were always an inspiring captain and got the best out of the serfs whenever you could but please, don't purport to have the inside edge on all things FSTA.
Frankly the "views" of the senior ALM on the squadron were hardly the skill sets that were acceptable at 2 Gp; you can always ask a question and get the answer you want if you phrase it correctly. I mean seriously,
"which of his specific in flight tasks couldn't be performed equally well by a senior steward" asked of a 101 Sqn or even a C130K ALM.
What answer did you expect? Perhaps the question "
which of his specific before flight tasks couldn't be performed equally well by a senior steward" would have got a more relevant answer. The problem is that a big chunk of the bidding drivers took the answer to your question to be all the Job Analysis that was needed to push their bid forward. As to wether they were going to be called MSO or not, it was a fact for quite some time they were all going to be re-trained Navs wearing a different dress.
Be real, you remember what trails were like, pure hysterical farse the second the task left home base. Even with downlinking and up to the minute technology you will never replace the human interface in the tactical management environment. How long before MAMS need to have a presence on the aircraft to ensure its loading compliance iaw JAR-Ops 1. Are you telling me that the super MSO (Nav) is going to get himself trained up on loading and DAC and then get all sweaty in the holds or that we should train the senior air steward to do the DAC and cargo inspections, raise the manifests etc all in the 2 hrs before flight.
If the service used the aircraft like the RNethAF it might just work, however, the RNethAF is far more constricted by JAR compliance than I believe we would wish to be and they have a union that says the captain isnt allowed to beat the galley slaves.
I expect a robust reply but I rather enjoyed that!
Sorry the thread has been hijacked butI believe the response from Beagle justifies the argument for return of commissioned rearcrew!
