Retention

[Easy Street]

Biggus

Aircrew are a slightly separate case due to the training costs. My argument was more generally laid across the whole span of the RAF and training in even the most technical trades gets nowhere near the £Ms. As for the Lossie exodus, you are right about the motivation and it was sloppy of me to phrase my point that way. The point is that our experienced personnel do not feel the same ties to the service that perhaps they once did. That might be fixable through increased pay and better pensions, but rather than bend over backwards to keep people in at all costs, I think that Manning has taken the view that a younger, more pliable workforce is in the long-term interests of the service. And if you think that the end of expeditionary operations means the end of expeditionary "training", think again! On current form, we are inching towards recreation of the MEAF. Political pressures will also see our F-35 sqn(s?) spending a significant proportion of their time afloat; I can't see many being keen on back-to-back tours or extended SNCO tenures on 617 Sqn in future!

So, for the separate case of aircrew - it's a given that military aircrew salaries are not going to get massively inflated to fix retention issues. What might usefully be reviewed is the career structure. Too many fast jet pilots get only one or possibly 2 front-line tours before their exit point, with the balance of their time being taken up in instructional posts or on ground tours that could easily be filled by non-flying branches. The number of ground tours that actually need a flying badge, especially at Flt Lt level, is vanishingly small. And the number of flying instructors in the system has risen out of all proportion to the size of the front line it supports.

A great proportion of those aircrew who PVR before their first exit point are multi-engine pilots who have accumulated the necessary 500hrs multi-pilot time to ease their path into civil aviation. That problem will never go away, and will be further exacerbated by deteriorating pension terms (especially at the IPP). So, I would close the ab-initio route to multi-engine flying and make ME flying a career progression option for FJ and RW pilots. Rather than park ex-FJ and RW pilots as highly-paid OpsOs, FSOs or staff desk jockeys, why not put them in a multi for the last 5-6 years of their career and help them into civvy street at IPP with an affordable (for MoD) pension and a marketable skill? There would be an overall saving in flying training (MEXO being a fraction of the length of MELIN + MEAFT). This would allow overall aircrew numbers to be reduced (with a radical reduction in the number of expensive over-40s) and would increase retention to IPP through the 'carrot' of ME flying for those who decide that they don't want to climb the career ladder in the FJ or RW worlds. And would increase the amount of time that expensively-trained pilots actually fly during their 18 years' service. We could also stop pretending that we need to 'broaden' them in ground tours, because the assumption would be that only those seeking to climb the ladder would need to submit to said 'broadening'.