Flight Engineer Question
A bright young apprentice I was working with the other day, was telling me that he was hoping to join the RAF as a Flight Engineer, once he'd completed his civvie aircraft engineering apprenticeship. As I'm an ex-RAF Techie, he was asking me questions about the selection procedure, most of which I was unable to answer.
A telephone call to an RAF CIO informed us that, "there are no plans to train any more Flight Engineers, and besides, airmen aircrew are always selected from existing service personnel".
I know the last part of the statement to be nonsense, but I'm not certain whether or not the bit about no more FE's was also an exercise in fobbing off!
The RAF still fly aircraft which need an Eng, so just what is the score on further selection and training?
Any info. would be much appreciated.