and doubtless would seriously hack-off those poor souls waiting years to start flying training.
BEags - part of the problem would appear to be a lack of poor souls waiting to start flying training - the frontline is now so small and OCU throughput has been turned down so far to avoid too much dilution, that we cannot get enough aircrew through OCUs and on to the frontline to sustain the aircrew branches. One option would be to take suitably experienced aircrew and return them to the cockpit to provide an element of continuity, reduce dilution rates, bring back some experience and (hopefully) put them through a refresher rather than a full OCU. The sad fact is though that with the loss of so many types in recent years (Harrier, Jaguar, VC10, Nimrod, C130K and shortly Tristar and Merlin) there may not be enough types left to
refresh on.
If we are having to try and get rid of 400 aircrew annotated ground posts (probably many with some form of SQEP requirement) then one might argue that we are already below critical mass and its no longer that the bracnh is on the verge of implosion but has already started imploding - it may now just be a matter of how quickly the implosion accelerates.
