Ahhh,
JENKINS, why indeed commission pilots?
At the risk of diverting this thread from its intended course, I once had the task of justifying the number of officer ATCOs vs SNCOs who did, fundamentally, the same tasks on console. The answer lay, of course, in the "supervisory and executive" roles that needed to be filled by officers, in addition to those in senior Staff appointments. That led to a requirement for a certain proportion of JOs working their way through the system, whilst SNCOs/WOs just did the basic tasks. Thus it was that 60% officers and 40% SNCO/WO was validated.
Could not the same philosophy also be applied to aircrew?
