buoy15 and BV, you are to a certain extent, quite correct.
The old STC Accounting Instructions were very specific and stated that the allocation of accommodation was not to be influenced by aircraft type, although there was a pecking order of who might have to share if there wasn't enough 'room at the inn'....
Nevertheless, we were quite surprised to receive an 'all stations, all stations' nastygram once from Cyprus. It seemed that a certain fleet had got into the habit of demanding off-base accommodation on each and every occasion, whereas the rule was that you went to Ops and
asked where they were putting you up for the night - they had the Big Picture of all movements to and from theatre. Of course if you needed to sleep during the day before a night trip to a nasty zone, trying to sleep through yet another RAFAT practice or jet-powered-motor-glider launch was not terribly conducive to decent rest...
But the primadonnas who waltzed in, refused to stay in Block 101 and demanded off-base hotac do indeed deserve a kick in the goolies.
I only refused the offered accommodation once - and that was in Wales when the St Athan air show organisers had put us into a doss-house full of remand prisoners.....
But there is also the fact that many fleets simply didn't know what they were entitled to - and their own accounts people didn't go out of their way to tell them. After my time on tiin triangles, I once sorted out the allowances for our F4 det in Gutersloh (aah!) - when we got back I dictated to the guys how to fill in their forms. They'd never seen them before and were astonished when they actually got a few quid back from accounts a week or so later....... Did they say thankyou? Guess.........
