AIDU said:
I understand and agree that you cannot recruit experience, but there are people still joining and there always will be. You make it sound like you are getting one up on the RAF by PVR'ing, they don't care and that is a shame. You will be forgotten as soon as your mug disappears from the mug board in the crew room. I understand that at this point in your personal circumstances it makes sense for you to leave, how you choose to leave is your choice. I bet you wouldn't leave if you didn't have a job to go to. I guess we will get the usual doom mongers saying I am wrong but unless it suits your circumstances in your life at this point people won't leave. How many are hanging on because of boarding school allowance etc. As for Al berr "I'm gonna soon" well you haven't and your statement is pointless.
Your first couple of lines are contradictory, and I'm sure there is more than a little pique and hurt rejection in your tone. Yes, of course there are always still folk joining up, but erm.. yup, they don't have experience!!
I was like you once, ya boo to those who want to leave and we won't miss you when you're gone anyway etc etc. But now, with the benefit of hindsight and broader experience, I can see that I was blinkered and myopic. Rather than spurn those who have the audacity to say they want to leave, so that their pessimism doesn't cause a ripple of disscord through those who are staying (for whatever reason), the question 'why do they want to leave?' should be asked. I bet too, that their loss IS felt, although we never had fots on our crewroom walls, so I couldn't possibly comment about that.
I bet that the reasons are based not on personal hardship, but declining job satisfaction. I seem to recall, the first wave of redundancies saw lots of switched on guys wanting to leave, because they saw the way things were going, and it was no longer the RAF that they joined. I was obviously the exception to that rule, because I applied anyway, and was turned down. Receiving the letter in my icy sh#thole in NW Bosnia really spurred me on though, I don't mind telling you.
Rather than treat them like pariahs, if a tiny amount of work was done to retain a fraction of this skills loss, the benefits would be huge.