Originally Posted by
BEagle
just another jock y (sic), the reference to people 'hidden away' meant all those who used to be on various ground tours, QFI-ing on UASs or on various 'aircrew annotated' posts.
My Wg Cdr colleague who was tasked to research the number of aircrew in such posts soon discovered that things had changed considerably since the days which the Air Officer who set him the task remembered. This was about 5 years ago.
Many of the posts which the Air Officer thought must still be manned by aircrew had in fact been either civilianised or contracted out. So the assumed vein of 'misemployed' aircrew simply didn't exist. (Such as the idle bugger who was OC Sims at a certain station in the mid-70s and had a monthly FJ SCT allocation which he never used....
)
Incidentally, while the Grob 120TP might be proving to be a success, I'm still wondering whence the next generation of QFIs will come....
B
eagle (sic), so what you're saying is we should take current pilots off the front line and put them in sh1tty ground jobs just in case we need to surge pilots sometime?
I do, however, wonder along with you about your last statement and despite the post by Speed Twelve, I believe we still need ex-front line pilots within the training system to inculcate the military ethos into the cockpit and ground training.