Originally Posted by
Rotate too late
Mate, I'm gonna take issue there. Since the reversion to squadron responsibility the serviceability has increased dramatically. I would advise you to think about how you're putting that across, because it's starting to sound like civi engineering good, REME/Army bad.....just my interpretation.
I don't really think I need your advice but thanks anyway. Try not to think of good v bad but rather efficient v inefficient. As for civy v military.... perhaps I've been on both sides of the fence during the past 40 odd years and am in a reasonable position to make a judgement. I've actually worked military aviation as a serviceman, military aviation as a civilian and pure civil aviation. The first two have a lot to learn from the later but that's another story.
You obviously know where I work. The skill level is much higher there compared to the regiments, mainly because the staff are older and have greater experience of aircraft maintenance in general and the Apache in particular. I would say that 50% of the technicians have been on the Apache for ten years or more. Yes they go home at 16.00 most days but they do spend all day doing their primary job of servicing aircraft with no diversions.
Obviously we don't go on exercise or deployment and we don't go to war anymore. More and more depth servicing is going civy which means the military guys are restricted to first line stuff and consequently, IMO they are losing knowledge. As I'm sure you know, plans for the training sqn and 450 hr servicings to go completely civy are well advanced. I don't know what the solution is. I see the efficiency and financial benefit of increased civilianisation but the cost is falling skills levels in the military.