With a minimum 12 months PVR notice anyway.

I'm not sure what the notice is Ken so apologies for that.

Thing,

I think you missed the point: people ARE walking away. So your proposal is really an observation. The question is what are the hierarchy going to do about it? They only have 3 options, really:

1-Improve pay and conditions to compensate (possibly with FRI)
2-Scale back overseas commitments to a level commensurate with harmony
3-Do nothing and hope that they've retired/been promoted by the time the house of cards collapses

My money's on 3, because it is significantly de-risked by the forthcoming end of Op HERRICK, so I suppose it's 2 as well. Certainly not 1!

12 month PVR time with a 25% pay cut. Yep, can walk away at any moment...

What's the 25% pay cut for?

Because he hasn't been retained by his retention pay, they're not going to be paying his retention pay to him.

Removal of flying pay. Ground trades have no such barrier, just a 6-12 month notice period.

So if aircrew PVR are they taken off flying?

No, they fly with no flying pay. I bet some Manning wallah got promoted for that idea, which only came in a few years ago. A poor man's FRI... a financial exit disincentive or FED, if you will...

Crikey, no wonder all of my playmates look miserable. Mind you, even without flying pay it's not bad is it; but then you get used to earning what you earn I suppose.

Seems entirely logical, why would you pay a retention incentive who isn't being retained? :confused:

But on the other hand aren't they being retained for a further 12 months?

Not of their own volition so an incentive (reward) no longer applies. They have to stick around for up to 12 months to enable a suitable relief to be recruited/found, trained and assigned with all the knock-on effects (e.g. manning turbulence, unplanned extra work, inconvenience and cost) their premature departure incurs.

So why can't HM Forces cope like any civvy business? eg if I want to leave my job I give one month's notice. I'm a highly trained professional, whats the difference?

That's been the policy of many a flight commander (SO2/3) for the last 15 years, although swap 'do nothing' with 'change something; anything'. I'm still convinced the study makers are asking the wrong questions. You can't see underlying reasons if you just pop up every year, ask a list of pre-decided questions and bugger off with the answers to make a graph. You can't measure the good guys having to take on more duties because of the shirkers exploiting get outs for OOA; you can't measure the impact of junior officers being posted every 2 years just as they get fairly useful at something etc etc. I wrote a letter to the RAF News in 2006 from Det about the deskies' seemingly cavalier attitude to managing OOA dates, such that people were constantly getting short notice, avoidable, date changes (usually forward) that the incumbents dates were never going to work for from their arrival 4/6 months earlier. It's perhaps notable that RAF News seemed to be the best way to raise the issue in the absence of other obvious means, and while it was a valid morale issue for 25+ people due to RTU in the next calendar month - so not an isolated moan - the respondee at PMA never bothered to pen an 'official reply' so it wasn't published (ergo highlighted). Result: still happens, people get fed up and leave, not necessarily because of the duty commitment, so much as the cock around factor. 13 years after 9/11 changed the landscape the RAF should be really good at OOA det management as, as far as I can see, we're contracting not invading anywhere new.

Couple of points.

1. People on here are talking as if lots of time away is a new thing. Talking to my dad about his time doing the same job in the 60's he definitely spent a lot more time away, in far larger chunks, too.

2. If you PVR, it is not necessary to work the full 12months. They will tell you it is, but it isn't. This has been pressed to tested recently by a couple of mates of mine.

Tourist, pray tell? What streams were these chaps and how did they manage to quit early?

Jumping jack, I would have no issue with loss of flying pay, if the pvr times remained at 6 months, but by increasing them to 12, you have effectively left individuals trapped as they can't tolerate a 25% pay cut for that long.

Tourist, a friend of mine leaves this month; but the only abatement to his 12 months PVR time was a few weeks of terminal leave and unused annual leave. It did knock a significant amount of time off (to the tune of 3 months or so) but if you have any information on how to cut that 12 months to something significantly shorter.... share! :ok:

...Interesting thread.

under the radar breaches of harmony have been going on for years because getting them recorded was a right pain, but you have to keep at it and at it - not only for yourself, but for your troops as well. Interesting also that people don't seem to know that Sep Service reduced from 10 days to 5 in about 2009 so how many sep service payments are not being claimed? Harmony and more specifically harmony breaches was one of the reasons I decided to jump during the last redundancy tranche.

When I was a Fg Off, I remember an arrivals interview with one of my Cpl MT Fitters returning after 4 months in the FI where he had replaced the person who had replaced him 4 months earlier and trying to justify that he had been put on DWR to replace the same person again 4 months later!! It was one of hardest interviews I have ever had to do; 2 guys from an entire trade covering 1 OOA for 6 rotations cannot be right - it wasn't a specialised post either. We fought it until somebody in PMA (as was then) called my SO1 (the Unit CO) and told him to put me back in my box! The NCO, a rising star, in question PVR'd shortly after - I wonder why? This was early in my career and reinforced my belief that manning doesn't actually care about right person, right place it just has targets like the rest of us, slots to fill and service numbers to do it with.

If your specialist role and background is generic enough so that someone else can step into your place at relatively short notice, then fair enough. However, it will still take time to find a suitable relief.

If you happen to be one of a small plot of specialists in terms of rank, branch, system knowledge, experience, etc., in whom the Service has invested hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of pounds' worth of training and career development, then it might be difficult to replace you in such a short time.

As a "highly trained professional", you of all people should appreciate how difficult it would be for the Service to replace you from such a small pool of similarly qualified and experienced personnel. Unlike HM Forces, the outside world of "civvy business" contains a much larger manpower pool from which to recruit with more scope for incentives, not to mention ease of hiring and firing.