RAT 5, There is a serious effort by some in the TD to achieve their personal bonuses. So, as in every dept, they try to reinvent the wheel every year to make it look like they have saved money. So we have recently reduced sim training and checking by 2 hours per annum (2 x 1800 pilots = lots of money), removed the final command check calling it a release flight, and making it almost impossible to fail a candidate by creating a grading system that links with a list of failure reasons (dont trust the checkers anymore). Its all a box ticking exercise that is designed to make it easier to find and promote the vast number of pilots they want. The threats of reducing the numbers in the TD by 10% per annum was made at recent training meetings. The FR TD always used to aim high above the min JAR requirements when it came to training, now the fools are reducing it back to the bare legal minimum. Why would you do that as the accountable manager, to get your bonus of course! You certainly wont get a bonus with a command pass rate of 50% will you? Clear as day. The LTCs were also told they were useless recently and warned against reading newspapers instead of training! Well they shouldnt force pilots to become trainers then should they? We are seriously disappointed in the dept as we can only see falling standards across the board.