I can't envisage Cardiff Airport allowing the return of winch-launch gliders to St Athan. They were pulled from there in the early 2000s. They are being precious enough with plans to build up GA activity there and they're a frequent pain in UWAS's posterior these days.
If cadets return to string-flinging only, then acquiring and maintaining appropriate real estate will be a big problem and many cadets will will face very, very long trips to get there and that would likely cause fatigue problems for weekend courses. This would then lead to increasing pressure for midweek courses, which then puts additional pressure on volunteer staff. I can't see any situation, given a chronic manning crisis in all three services, whereby they would start hiring a sizeable cabre of full-time instructors. Nor would the idea of pulling kids out of school in term time be very popular with many schools and colleges. This s to say nothing of being unable to use busy stations like ODI regularly during the week. Even Tern Hill, being a satellite of Shawbs (And correspondingly Predannack/Culdrose for the Andrew) would be unusable most of the time midweek.
As expensive as a Vigilant refit may be, there is a very good reason why, at the time of the pause, only 7 squadrons used the Viking, despite there being a surplus of airframes. Little 626 down only the Lizard went from a 2a/c establishment to 5 or 6 not because there was a big expansion to Plymouth and Cornwall Wing, but because HQACO realised that nobody else could use them.
Last edited by Cat Funt; 23rd Nov 2015 at 02:48.