Our military aviators are leaving to go to civilian flying jobs at an amazing rate.

I am a member of a couple of groups on Facebook that are focused upon that situation.

My main group is Army Warrant Officer oriented.....and the news seen there is not promising for the US Army.

Service in the US Military has imposed a real hardship on those who serve...multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, assignments to Korea, short deployments to other parts of the World, along with temporary deployments for training within the USA.

The pay and benefits in Commercial Aviation are exceeding that of the Military....and offer far more stability and fewer re-locations.

Throw in the shortage of pilots at the Air Carriers.....no wonder we have good people leaving well short of military retirement to go fly for the airlines.

The point of my post was to point out how the FAA considers Military Aviation experience (training, check rides, flight hours, etc) as compared to what the British CAA does for the British Military Pilots.

The FAA is far more accommodating.....thus making the transition from being a Military Pilot to being a civilian licensed pilot much easier and far less time consuming and costly financially.

That facilitates our guys and girls leaving the military and going to the airlines.

The other point that needs considering is the fact it is the individual pilot who is able to take their military records to the FAA and be able to document the training and flight experience as the basis for the issuance of a civilian rating/license with no requirement to actually undergo FAA administered Flight Checks as the FAA honors the Military Check rides and Flight Training.

Sasless, it is only your last sentence which shows a difference between the two sides of the pond, there are already plenty of exemptions given to Brit-mil pilots towards the licences but you still have to do the ground exams and flight test.

Insight here on the coming train wreck from a former OC at RAF Valley https://www.aerosociety.com/news/uk-...he-cliff-edge/

Thanks
 

Thank you for posting, a worrying read.

She quite rightly highlights the problems of furnishing sufficient numbers of service QFIs. However, she misses out the parallel problem of promotable pilots. Late accumulation of experience will result in fewer relevant reports on which to base the decision to promote individuals, so there will either be a (7 1/2 year?) gap in the career progression structure of the RAF or there will be some speculative decisions and/or senior officers with limited front line experience. Or a dearth of aircrew senior officers.

Is there now a case to treat our QFI's as a 'special case' and offer them a seperate career path/pay and loyalty inducements to retain them in the face of the civilian and other markets?

You are not going to unblock the pipeline without Instructors.

so she has experience of the Fg TRg system from a 'customer' point of view and she was OC Ops at Valley during the time the MFTS ball started rolling - that makes her reasonably well qualified to comment I think. She was probably privy to far more 'managerial' discussions than any of the QFIs.

Please do not say 'customer'. She was a junior officer under training and failed an arduous course. OC Ops means managing a military airfield. Fuel provision, ATC, etc etc. A complex and demanding task as a manager but does not involve any involvement of the provision of flying training.

I have a question.

How long does the MOD expect our fleet of 28 Hawk T.2's to last?
The Hawk T.1 has been in British military service for 43 years and she is still going, but, from what I can gather, she had a rather solid sustainment fleet from around 160(?) total airframes, which allowed each airframe to be maintained properly without causing a major disruption to the training system.
How will the RAF/RN make the T.2 last for even half that time when we don't even half 25% of the numbers of the original Hawk T.1 order to spread out the flying hours more evenly?

If memory serves, the "fly away" cost of a single Hawk Mk.128 is £28 million. It's possible that they will all be knackered in 15 years or less so that doesn't seem like value for money, from my subjective, fiscally conservative point of view.

Hawk TMk2 Life
 

Planned lifespan for the T2 = 25 years.

28 airframes x 10,000 fg hrs per airframe divided by 9,200 flying training hrs per year less an attrition rate of about 1 airframe every 3 years.

Those were the original assumptions. Things have changed somewhat over the past few years!

RIAT 2019 static
 

Also at Fairford last weekend, I did a stroll around the static. So it was nice to see again for another year running, Ascent line up lol (my photos below).

Cheers


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0f17861e8.jpeg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....791f73af1.jpeg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....bb9d6a5bf.jpeg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f480780a8.jpeg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b06643075.jpeg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....42420d7e2.jpeg

Who were they trying to fool with that Phenom?

Did they manage to fly it there and back without hitting anything this time?

Does that suggest a Phenomenally stupid decision.......hat, coat

Asymmetric
 

How do you demonstrate the full effects of asymmetric flight with the engines so close together? Cheat I guess...

Anaprop,

I think that it is possible to demonstrate the effects of asymmetric flight in an aircraft with the engines close together if the engines produce enough thrust. Even in the F4 Phantom (with engines embedded within the fuselage) if the pilot did not carry out the BOLDFACE to fly the aircraft the result was often disaster. Only due to having an ejection seat were more lives not lost.

The Phenom 100 is too under-powered for it's proposed use in the RAF for a number of reasons.

Once again the advice that was given by those aircrew at the "front line" was ignored by those at the top of Ascent and the Air Staff at HQ22 Gp.

Dominator2,

How right you are! Scimitar, Phantom and the Vulcan could all "bite" on one or two !!

Bill

Bent Phenom
 

Did the bent one get fixed?