OK. First, as has been pointed out many times, the way CAS is laid out at present leaves several airports with little or no access to airways. In many cases, therefore, traffic using these airports has no choice but to fly outside. In many other cases, the airways do not provide coverage on many of the routes people want to fly. Ditto.
Stop looking at this as exclusively a NCL problem. Various sneering comments have been made at pilots and airlines about not wishing to accept the extra track miles.
We have a schedule to keep. If we don't keep to it, people ask questions. Even something as small as, say, a F50 takes somewhere in the region of £1500 per hour to keep in the air. An extra 33 track miles therefore puts £250 on the cost of a one-way trip. Di that eight times per day and you've lost a couple of thousand quid - or put it another way, your break-even load factor has just gone up by two pax per trip - not insignificant in a small aircraft.
Compare this with the efforts we make to tanker fuel when we can - uploading at AAA instead of BBB can save £15 per rotation. That's all. So £500 per rotation is a LOT of dosh. Compare the reported saving BA made by reducing the number of olives in a business-class salad from three to two.
Running off-airways is a risk, yes. Of course it is. Nobody doubts it. Sometimes (going into NWI or HUY for example) there is no choice in the matter.
In general, pilots on both sides of the civvie/mil divide are extremely professional. There are exceptions on both sides, however. Where these exceptions occur, people tend to tar all with the same brush. I have had conversations with mil pilots who refer to airways as "your bit of airspace" and Class G as "our bit of airspace". He quite seriously argued that civil traffic should not be permitted in Class G. I have heard military traffic refuse to move and refuse to give ATC an estimate of when they would relinquish their "box" to allow traffic to descend into NWI.
I keep myself as up-to-date on ATC matters as I can. I regularly visit my local ATC unit wherever I'm based. I try to understand from talking to them what the specific problems in the area are. I've attended ATC training days, I've played in ATC simulators. I've watched the Pennine guys and gals going throught heir paces trying to keep stuff apart. I'm trained as a Flight Safety Officer, and still have very good contacts in the military world. So you can believe me when I say I know what goes on on the other side of the mike.
Part of the perceived problem between civil and military FJ mates is that airline pilots are generally paid to be ultra-conservative and restrained. By the time they get a command, on average they are well into the second half of their working lives. In contrast, FJ drivers are much younger, and while trained to the nuts in safety, are selected for a rather more aggressive, "can-do" attitude to their work. This can result in their being perceived as gung-ho. In a very few cases, the gung-ho attitude is real. My colleagues, on the other hand, are seen often as stick-in-the-mud, get in the way, refuse to do anything they've never done before, and are slow.
What's the solution? Tolerance, professionalism, attention to other airspace users and their needs.