In a nutshell:
Army Flying pay of the 90s and early 00s was a complex beast (Crewmen, P1, P2, the 4 year rule etc etc) very different to the other services mainly due to the fact we had JNCO pilots and crewmen. It was also open to interpretation for whichever pay clerk was dealing it at the time.
So, for example, a Cpl crewman who had achieved 2nd tour crewman flying pay who then qualified as a pilot would go onto 2nd tour P2 pay and progress through the increments, then on qualification as an Ac Comd he would then go onto P1.
P2 was scrapped back in 2001 and so an even larger disparity arose between guys who had potentially qualified and served at exactly the same time but would be on different rates of Flying Pay according to how the rules had been interpreted at his/her unit.
Fast forward to the advent of JPA and everything was supposed to have equalled out with some people even marking time on rates of pay before progressing. This happened for some but not others.
Fast forward to October 2012 (post service complaints from those disgruntled that their peers were still ahead of them on FP) - AAC initiates investigation, further misinterprets all the different interpretations of the "rules" and decides that the vast majority of aircrew who qualified in the 90s and early 00s had been overpaid and a potential clawback was announced. This ranged anywhere from £2000 to ..... wait for it..... £38,000 for one unfortunate individual.
The investigating team had incorrectly calculated the debts and those amounts have increased, decreased, increased again, are inclusive of tax, are not inclusive of tax.
Hey presto - vast majority of SNCO and Officers from that era alienated and then told to lump it. The rest as they say, is history.
And it's only very recently have they realised the scale of the disaster - a relatively minor amount of money to recover from a group where no fraud has been committed but who cost a very large amount of money to train and will be quite difficult (in the short term) to replace.
This is the short version.
