This is a heartfelt post on Facebook by a close friend of mine, as well as being a former cadet, a current member of staff but due to his love of flying gained in the ATC a former AAC pilot. I have his permission to share this.
Hi All
Yesterday we got the shock news that the Reserve Armed Forces minister has backed the OC 2FTS to slash the Air Cadet Volunteer Gliding Squadrons from 25 to 11 in our 75th Anniversary Year.
The decision is shocking and is based purely on monitory terms and takes the Air out of the Air Training Corps.
We in Northern Ireland are affected more than any region, now that we do not have any flying assets within Northern Ireland.
We are promised an Air Experience Flight (AEF) sometime in the future which could be up to 2 years maybe more away.
Our cadets have a chance of flying by travelling to Woodvale by lLiverpool once a year, they travel across and many a time do not fly due to weather, they don't get another chance that year!!
If we are fortunate, we might get flying at annual camps, in my experience over the last 3 years of camps which I have been Camp Commandant, we haven't had any AEF. Always excuses why they cannot provide flights for camps!!
Voyager flights have been promised, nothing provided, helicopter flights by Joint Helicopter Command have been promised, again nothing has materialise. Our mother service, the Royal Air Force, doesn't give a flying f*** about there cadet organisation, the Air Cadets, ATC and CCF (RAF).
I have been an Officer in the RAF VR(T) for 24 years and feel so demotivated by this move. What makes it worse for me, my son who is a cadet in the ATC and CCF (RAF) became 16 just after the grounding, not the paused to flying that OC 2FTS likes to call it, the grounding of all the gliders just when he became eligible to apply for a Gliding Scholarship.
There will be no gliding opportunity available for him during the rest of his time in the Corps, his only chance of a flying qualification would be if he was selected for a Flying Scholarship.
With this decision to cut the VGS, you would think they would have increased the number of Flying Scholarship available? No, Northern Ireland only got one cadet selected to receive a Flying Scholarship for 2016.
I am sorry for this long winded FB message, but I feel aggrieved for every cadet in the Corps and all the VGS staff who now find themselves displaced by this decision and by the Corps.
I ask if you would like this page, and if you have some connection, write, phone, email the people named and contact your MP.
