Why £4,000,000?

[Tankertrashnav]

When I trained in 1969-70 the oft-quoted figure for training a nav or pilot was around £100k. Thats one fortieth of the current figure, but the house I bought in 1971 for £5k is probably worth around £200k now, so £4m is probably about right, allowing for inflation.

[ShotOne]

We're all worth it, Fox 3! I very much agree with your point about a good air force, although you picked a bad example to illustrate it since Saddam did spend a lot training, much of it in this country on very experienced ex RAF instructors. And no matter what he'd spent would it have affected the final issue?

The posts on 300 hr instructors are wide of the mark. If you book a trial flight or to lesser extent PPL this may be so but not on a commercial course.

I accept the point that some of these figures compare apples with pears. But that's sort of the point of the thread; allowing bean-counters to lump a load of other peoples costs onto your budget is a high risk strategy!

[The Old Fat One]

It's an interesting point you raise, but ultimately you can rarely compare public sector and private sector figures like these in any meaningful way.

Commercial companies can easily "box" any cost item straight from their management accounts (although, in this instance, the cost of flying training will usually be born externally anyway). Public companies have to extrapolate this figure from their high level budgets.

Back in the day the cost of train me (rear crew) was circa £120K. That's about half a mill in today's money, so four airline pilots then!! (again, I was worth it )

but look at just some of the components of that somewhat imaginary figure...

A complete RAF Station (RAF Finningley) pop circa 2000 servicemen/women and MOD
A complete flying school (6FTS) plus all the instructors
An aircraft fleet (Dominie) plus all the pilots and engineers

Need I go on...or is the point well made??

civvy pilot v military pilot cost wise is interesting because it dramatically highlights the benefits of outsourcing.

It is incredibly easy to outsource civvy flight training. Which is exactly what the industry has done.

It is incredibly hard to outsource military flight training (accept perhaps at the very basic level), so we are stuck with the huge cost.

Incidentally, I am way out of date on all of this but I thought a full ATPL required 1500 hours flight time ic 500 multi pilot yada yada yada. How the hell does one get this for £120K? Yeh, I did see your trick of the keyboard ...revenue earning flights but even on a flawed comparison at least keep it honest, what?

[Milo Minderbinder]

does the 4,000,000 include the capital cost of crashed aircraft?

[Whopity]

£4M probably reflects the total cost including paying and accommodating the candidate throughout the process. Training is to a standard using very expensive training aircraft. It is probably to operational level.

Civil training is sold as a commodity, everyone, including the airlines want the lowest bottom line and will only include the marketable minimum cost. It takes no account of pay or accommodation or any of the other charges that the candidate becomes liable for. Normally it only covers costs to licence issue. Training uses cheap aircraft, low quality accommodation, poorly paid instructors where everything operates to the lowest common denominator, so the true cost is not reflected in the price.

[NutLoose]

You also have to cost in the likes of spares.
Parts for aircraft where the run is going to be in the hundreds as opposed to the likes of aircraft such as the 737 where it is in the thousands are always going to cost more when design, tooling, and materials are taken into account.
Henry Ford was correct when he mass produced and could hence bring down the price.

[ShotOne]

No you don't, the price has to include that. You can't just stck an extra few grand on someone's bill because you had to buy a new engine

[NutLoose]

You miss my point, part of the cost of the hourly rate for a Hawk, Typhoon whatever is because they are built in limited quantities and hence parts are more expensive, factor in an airframe life expectancy of say under 10,000 hrs as opposed to a 737 that has a life of 60,000 cycles and the cost again is higher. Engine reliability on a 737 will result in it's on wing time being measured in years, the Typhoon engines running closer to the limits will be considerably less..

All of these things contribute to the higher costs of training.

[ShotOne]

I do accept that,Nutloose but still find it hard to see how a single engined trainer whose ease of maintenance and simplicity has made it a big sales success costs more than a medium sized twin eng airliner including pilots and cabin crew, maintenance, fuel and insurance.

I've been criticised, fairly to a degree, for comparing apples with oranges. But my inial post was directed at non fast jet types, indeed I even took the trouble to list some types yet most of the responses related just to Typhoon and Tornado.

[NutLoose]

The thing with military training is I believe they do not differentiate, you get streamed off onto Helicopters or transports as you go along dependant on the pilots abilities, you couldn't start off training your pilots to be say Helicopter or Tanker crews as you would be losing those that would make the grade for fast jets.

In a Civi world, that's all there is, you would either train for a helicopter or airline licence, in the military I don't believe they are separate licences, you could end up on Helicopters and later be streamed onto fast jets, rare but it does happen.

[Evalu8ter]

'you could end up on Helicopters and later be streamed onto fast jets, rare but it does happen'

Hmm, as a CH47 captain in Bosnia in the early 00's I was the only crew member who got selected and trained as a pilot (single seat rec out of FJLIN but no slots/hold too long so off to RW...). Within 5 years both Sgt ALMs had commissioned, one to Pilot, one to Nav and were both on GR4s. My nav did a pilot x-over and also ended up on GR4s.....guess who stayed RW? Not an issue for me (though always fancied being a Tucano QPNI...).

My point is that ability is second to the needs of the service (within 18mths of me leaving Linton everyone was going to Valley again), but the £4m figure allows the military the flexibility to move people around as they need to. If only we could go back to streaming at the end of BFT again.

Given the rise of UAVs/RPAS (including specialist pilots) and the high synthetic training content proposed for F35, not to mention the incentive for MFTS to generate a profit, it will be interesting to see if this figure falls in the future.

[NutLoose]

I was of course referring back to my service period when it didn't happen much, the only one I can remember was PM, who went Tornado.

Says a lot about the manning levels these days i suppose.

[Roland Pulfrew]

And quite simply of course, £4M is for FJ pilot, not for ME or RW. Last figure I saw for them was about £1.2-1.3M. And that figure includes elements of all the infrastructure, the instructors, the aircraft which we own, elements of the dental and medical system which supports our aircrew. The adminers, the air tarffic controllers. etc, etc. All stuff that would not be factored in to the £120K quoted at the start of the topic; if you included all of that in the cost of training a civ pilot the costs would be nowhere near £120k! Apples and gorillas really.

[Easy Street]

A huge cost that I don't think has been mentioned yet is the cost of training those who get chopped. When figures like £4m per FJ pilot are quoted, they are "total cost of the training system" divided by "number of pilots graduated", so the stats inevitably include costs for chopped pilots. A lot of money if it happens towards the end of a FJ OCU!

Some will get re-streamed RW or ME, and become productive, I accept that - but they rack up at least double the training cost in doing so!

[lj101]

Some info here ref SAR training costs;

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reque...e%20U.pdf.html

[simmy]

Cost of Pilot Training

It's over 50 years since I stood in the hangar on my "Wings" parade. (It was raining). The reviewing officer said that we had just cost the country 7 doctors or 15 schoolteachers! (Take your pick). I went on to fly the Vulcan and proceeded to cost the country their salaries every time I did an extra and unnecessary ILS to roll! (OK, touch and go).

[The Old Fat One]

I've been criticised, fairly to a degree, for comparing apples with oranges.

Not at all...your initial query has merely been answered, quite comprehensively in point of fact.

Continuing with the query is beginning to look just a tad obtuse...or perhaps a man with an agenda??

[ShotOne]

Has it? That depends on whether being told in lots of different ways that the figures arent comparable counts as a comprehensive answer. While I've enjoyed the banter the only thing I've learned is that the official figures roll in lots of unspecified but very substantial costs which aren't directly related to pilot training.

Agenda? Not in the way I think you're suggesting but RAF pilot training has slowed to a trickle, which concerns me. This is largely down to cost, or rather, perceived cost. Allowing others to dump other costs in your budget is termed in accountancy "being shafted" and will lead to the service losing future budgetary battles...and maybe real ones too!

[Easy Street]

The reason why pilot training slowed to a trickle was that the RAF finally grasped the nettle and stopped pumping pilots through a system designed for an air force twice its actual size. At times this excess capacity has been successfully sold off (to the Indians and Saudis, amongst others) but most of the time it has just been flooding the front line with newly-trained pilots and causing a problem with excessive dilution. The decision to pare things back is much overdue. The process of realigning the long-term costs with the newly-accepted reality is still underway.

The costs of running RAF Valley, RAF Linton-on-Ouse, RAF Shawbury, etc etc, are practically all attributable to pilot training. It would be disingenuous to pin the costs elsewhere and public sector transparency rules mean that the accounting devices open to multinationals are simply not available.

Having said all that, the marginal vs full cost of training a single FJ pilot will become an item of particular interest to the service chiefs when the F-35 pipeline opens. CAS will be very sensitive to any claims that RAF pilots are more expensive than any others when he (or at least, a contractor on his budget) is providing the majority of the training equipment and infrastructure, and will want to bill accordingly!

[Ken Scott]

When one considers the number of high profile cases recently in which ostensibly highly experienced civilian pilots have crashed due to a lack of basic piloting skills then perhaps the cost of military training doesn't seem quite so expensive?