Advice on leaving
Due to the fact that military personnel are no longer allowed tell anyone anything about what it's really like in the military, i am a civilian posting on behalf of a close friend.
He is a pilot on an operational squadron, with a couple of operational tours behind him.
He loves the friends, the banter, the chance he gets to make a real difference in the world and, most importantly, the flying.
When he joined up, he realised he would have to make sacrifices, especially with regards to family life, he realised there would be a lot of time away from home and he also realised that he was volunteering for a very dangerous job.
During training he had limited contact with people who were actually on the front line and was concentrating too much on passing the course to care about what the result would be anyway.
However, after time in the 'real air force' he has come to the conclusion that the stretch in the forces is too much for him personally.
He has had a couple of very close calls in theatre (which he accepts as an inevitable part of the job), however on return home, he was faced with crumbling accommodation, civilianisation, (that no matter what they say is a pure cost cutting exercise that only reduces the quality of service), low morale across the board and of course JPA!
He is disheartened that allowances have effectively been cut (through the back door) by the introduction of JPA, and also that when back in the UK, the aircraft are just so unservicable that he practically never gets to go flying.
In order to go flying he is also pressurised to accept unservicabilities and to rely on back up systems (that should be just that) as primary systems, leaving no redundancy.
He is Aircrew and therefore knows that it was inevitable that he was going to lose friends but, when you get the distinct feeling that because of penny pinching and cost cutting that you could easily be next, he feels that the pressure is too much for his young family and that it is time to leave.
Having spoken to the people around him he has come to the conclusion that the ones that are really unhappy outnumber the ones that aren't by a long way and he doesn't want to become one of unhappy ones just because he was too stubborn or frightened of life outside the military to quit.
Does anyone have any advice on leaving to join the airlines? Advice from anyone who did it from the position of a relatively junior pilot would be really helpful.
Many thanks