The grass is certainly not greener just a different shade. All my departing cadre are now working in better paid jobs after 1 year. They range from Defence related, Telecoms. Transport, Consulting, The City and Charity. That's jumping at the SO2/1 level. Few reasons for a pay cut unless it's the job and a quality of life issue and you apply yourself.

Oh dear. So where's the saving? Pay NCO pilots a lot less and they will leave sooner/not join in the first place. Pay them similar to the commissioned brethren and the savings are negligible.

And remind me, how is pilot manning at the moment in the only British Service which employs NCO pilots?

I count myself fortunate then. Train driver ~45K (basic, 4 day week, 7 1/2 weeks leave, final salary pension). Work an average of 1 day overtime a week over 1 year and it's ~60K. A few drivers at my depot are on ~75K. I'd be on ~72K if still in the mob.

If one can put up with being away from home a lot, working nights, and a general air of 'grubbiness' freight drivers can top 100K.

A lot depends on location. Civvy jobs near in rural far-flung locations (like where we used to have airbases...) will not deliver the same pay as RAF time-served jobs. Might be different for those staying near shiny city based HQs etc. Take the rough with the smooth - less pay, less eventual pension but you stay somewhere you want to live.
As others have said, I never joined as aircrew for the flying pay - I took a small cut to join but it was the job/lifestyle I wanted. The pay was a nice bonus once it started increasing (especially on PAS :ok:)
Agree, less pay may mean some will leave but that probably suits the MoD paymasters - get the newbies in to fill the seats for less cost. The value of the lost experience matters not a jot to the bean-counters - just look at the recent redundancy fields.

Torque
 

Reduced initial (basic) trg costs.
SNCO pay with Flying Allowance paid only for hours flown.
No need for inventing so many jobs, career paths for post cockpit employment.
Significant 'cull' of Commissioned jobs.
I disagree that people will not join as I believe the main 'pull' is the chance of Mil flying rather than just the money.

Let's face it, with the size of the RAF, and where it's going, we should all be able to name the Gp Capts.

Overly simplistic? probably (definitely) but there are big cuts coming and I think a lot of the accepted conventions will ultimately be put to the wall.

Willard

100K for driving a train?????? Is'nt that the sort of thing that went on in Greece? No wonder we are up to our arses in debt!!

That kind of money is unusual, but not unheard of, and it means spending >50% of the year away from home. Probably made up of 50K basic and 50K overtime. The pay is also why there are around 400 applicants for every position advertised (freight & pass). In terms of freight it's paid for by the price one pays for goods in shops, on the forecourt of car dealers, etc.

Eurostar drivers - pretty much 'top of the heap' in terms of transporting walking freight - are on ~64K before overtime. Virgin and CrossCountry are on ~56K basic. Much of the difference between companies depends on Sunday working and other such arrangements.

Nope!

An AAC SNCO pilot has to be a Cpl to start the pilot's course so how long does it take to recruit and train a soldier and then teach him a trade for long enough to get promoted to Cpl? Then you add the pilot training.

It just takes a few months at Cranditz to turn a civvy into a RAF officer then the same flying training costs as the Cpl pilot.

No significant cull of commissioned jobs on an AH sqn.

As for the cuts - they will be harsh but the green army will probably bear the brunt of them.

Of the several friends/colleges who left (either redundant/PVR'd on not being made redundant/not re-engaged etc) I know of no one who is not better off financially and/or in terms of quality of life (their own view of their quality of life, may still be away from home). I agree the grass is not greener, but rates of pay play a large part in motivating people to go to work, and in many cases have worked very hard to achieve the goal of aviating. Not everyone who leaves will chose to stay in a remotely similar field, and go look for challenges well outside there comfort zone and apparent skill sets.

They are re-hiring some of those that were made redundant to try stop the manning shortfall. A pay reduction RRP(F) or otherwise will not help that shortfall.

Either way I'm off to drive trains :ok:

Ex-Army friend of mine now drives trains. He suggested you may wish to consider your feelings about someone stepping in front of your train to end it all. It happens, and it isn't easy to deal with.
My brother gave up driving tow trucks, which was very well paid, after discovering that the crashed ones may still contain victims, or parts thereof.

I recently attended a Career Transition Workshop and one of the first comments the consultant said was 'none of you should expect to take a pay cut - unless you want to'. This was backed up with some pretty good statistics, too. There were also several on the course who wanted to down shift and aim to live on £1000 net wage pcm - no mortgage, kids grown up, big pension etc... sadly, I'm not quite in that bracket!

Less green army means fewer helicopters needed to support green army. I also agree with Melchett that half the carriers, about half the F-35s and all the Tornados are probably doomed.

Curiously, that statement says more about your own prejudices than it does about the recruitment policy of the the RN or RAF.

Yes, I know it was tongue in cheek.....:rolleyes:

If you're looking for a bean counter type method of saving money, I offer the following.

Many years ago the UK armed forces formally declared they were becoming a Monday to Friday only outfit. How I hear you ask? When the leave (absence :ugh::ugh:) rules changed so that you only needed to claim for Mondays to Fridays, weekends didn't count.

Since you don't need leave for weekends, you can't be working weekends any more - therefore cuts every bodies pay by two sevenths to reflect that fact.

Simples!!

The economy may not be universally rosy but there is a lot of money to be made out there. My son, 3 years out of college and qualified in a manual trade is now on £50k and seems to be nowhere near his ceiling. His Dad, who left the mob a few years ago wouldn't even get out of bed for that! Aviation is not the only game in town!

A good friend in the Army is short finals to get out having seen his relatively junior (second tourist) wife be head hunted by the city after going a careers fair just to see what was out there after a lousy week at work. He's now engineering a similar move and will be leaving his on appt Major salary for what is effectively a wg cdr's salary plus pension and none of the grief that seems to be par for the course.

I'm watching how things go for him with interest. What I have learned so far from his experience is that we seem to be institutionally incapable of selling ourselves properly.

I believe that, currently, you are partially mistaken.

It costs [relatively] peanuts to maintain and operate the Tornado for starters. Spare components are reclaimed at Leeming, the aircraft belong to US, so we can adapt them to whatever the most urgent need is, try doing that to Typhoon or [HaHaHaHa] the next to useless F-35 :}

Ah, but glad rag, you're using logic where it has never been used before.

Reds
 

Can we eventually get rid of the Reds......which will save the AOC and his entourage costing the tax payer for a holiday in Greece....

That should deliver the kind of savings needed to pay off the national debt.....

So, with a majority Government in the bag , what do you reckon to an early SDSR announcement ?