A note about training quality
I must point out that as a member of a large team dedicated to providing quality training we are also the victims of the regulators and the customers who both seem to think that in some weird variation of the laws of physics that LESS is somehow MORE.
The regulators apparently fail to notice that we are two generations of helicopter on since they wrote the licensing syllabuses and drew up their ideas for recurrent training.
Customers have a habit of promising the best training then never writing the cheques because they find out that having been awarded the contract at a skinny price they can no longer meet their promises because they overestimated the reliability of their hardware and the vagaries of day to day life in the helicopter business.
One wonders quietly whether the operators will be do their usual trick and cut back on training and spare parts which have traditionally not been well defined in operating contracts. Is that in error or by design? mmmmmm....
conspiracy theories are two a penny but as long as the job gets done........
The most frustrating thing in the world for any teacher is to be handed good students who are hard working and keen as mustard only to find that you have to pass them on with the job half done. The next most frustrating thing is to be handed students who have had such poor basic training that you don't have a hope in hell of getting them to where they need to be. Unfortunately I see too many of the latter and not enough of the former.
I can't help feeling that one day we will pay the price for this.
As far as the SAR predicament goes if you have well trained personnel then to a certain extent you can pinch a bit on the recurrent training but what worries me is the poor training levels that precede their arrival in the SAR world. My focus is a global one and not necessarily relating to UK but I can't help feeling that UKSAR suffers from the same malaise. Less than ideal but we will fumble through. We always do.
G.