Liability?
i have not followed this string closely because I stopped flying ATC cadets in Chipmunks many years ago but do have an interest because I now fly Gliders
Gliding clubs operate under a set of rules which will seem strange to jet operators but they have continued to provide safe machines for many years. My own club has experienced one fatal in thirty five years and that was non technical. Many of the Venture staff will be of that ilk. It would be all to easy to slip into gliding club mode
So far as I can tell the big problem at the base of all this delay has been the need to correctly address liability. Taking youngsters flying in what look like military aircraft had gradually become a serious worry for the top echelon and rightly so.
We owe an obvious duty of care to these kids and the service repute is very much at stake if we fail in that duty. I think I recall an awful stink when a Chippy hit the hangar at St Athan and a similar attitude when the boss of an midlands AEF stood a Chippy on its nose because the wind was obviously out of limits.
Picture the headlines if even a minor incident revealed an RAF engineering failure. One of the oft overlooked problems with outsourcing is that the parent organisation is grabbed by liability for the actions of an agent and the public will not accept "it was them guv"
We should applaud them at the top for having the wit to see the bigger long term risk and resist the temptation to see AEF/Gliding as an extension of civil gliding clubs