I don't think MFTS RW students will ever see an EOL/touchdown auto except in the FTD - another erosion of a key helicopter skill.

When you say 'the best of Cobham' I hope it's true. There were some outstanding Cobham instructors during the old DHFS contract, but there was more than a sprinkling of idle belters churning out NI 1980's stuff regardless of what the syllabi called for, and generally waiting for Godot.


If you have managed to keep the wheat and jettison the chaff, I'd be marginally supportive (despite the wrong choice of aircraft for 50% of your throughput).


Hopefully the decision on the ex-Cobham guys wasn't made on how they looked on paper......


Cobham boss: Helicopter unit workers' fake degrees had no impact on safety | City A.M.

MGD

There seem to be quite a few looking at either re-joining or FTRS contracts. So it might be ‘chaff from the wheat’ :ok:

LJ

That will be because the military is struggling to fill its agreed share of the QHIs for MFTS and will probably suffer contractual penalties if it doesn't.

The aspiration for a high percentage of mil instructors was a great idea but didn't match what is actually available.

Hmmm I do not understand the urgent need there to add three letters to one's title in a jiffy ? It is not like the US system where theres a prerequisite (apart from good stick and cyclic / hours in the air )to have Associate and Bachelors degree in tens of dozens of aerospace related degrees nowadays to get to the interview.

The article stated were the pilots were based in Curacao hence flying AW139 for the Coast Guard ; so figured they were informed their CVs pulled up (I had to do that for every employee as part of my internal audit in old helicopter company I worked for, i.a.w EASA changes) and they were non Brits / trained in USA etc etc which had to have a degree??

If for some reason management says "ok peeps, under x,y,z may need a degree, lests send you both or do a distance learning course with one of the many aviation colleges stateside and earm it within 5-6 years"

cheers

Two video blogs from the ex Requirement Manager of UK MFTS on you tube puts some more pieces in the jigsaw:

They where Brits and they hold EASA licences. Pilots and engineers!

Really? Wonder why he's "ex"? :}

Wow, that T6 sure is ugly!

He retired from flying. Was also the boss of 4 Sqn

http://www.fastjetperformance.com/po...e-bovril-snail

Two interesting points (albeit two years old) - the need for more aircraft and (at 8.48) he says after 5 years the RAF owns the T6s, rather than Ascent/Affinity.

Not why he's an ex-flyer but why he's an ex-requirements manager.

Not hard to work out - even with 8 FL sqns (5x Typhoon, 3x F35) you conservatively want to have 4 ab initio Guys hitting streets of the sqn each year. 32 Pilots x 100 hours = 3200 hours. Divide that through 10 airframes and the number of available flying days a year and you can see you start running into issues. This is before you have any wastage (scrubbed due weather, performance, U/S) or include any non student flying (flypast, display, Pax ride or staff training).

However now that Typhoon is moving to more squadrons, even with heavy utilisation of simulation I can see why there isn’t enough T-6.

Don't forget international students ;)!

Strange how the website has the same vacancies over and over...no recruitment problems I'm sure

Pay peanuts := - Get chimps :rolleyes:

:E

Its not just that they are short sighted on the recruitment process and how they treat the staff they recruit but a breathtaking lack of understanding of the civilian world and whats going on out there. There is no magic pot of qualified Instructors queuing up at work for Ascent because the people with those skills are already in high demand across the industry. Take multi engine IR Instructors, there is a Europe wide shortage of them. Every school I know is unable to recruit because the normal feed of suitably quailified guys is not happening as the airlines swallow them up. The pool of people they expected to recruit from out of the Airforce are not taking up the offers being made as the T&Cs suck and they have a lot to learn about looking after staff.

Instructors are simple folk, they expect to be trained where required for the job and do the job that was advertised not have a snippets of the contract thrown at them that says "and any other task the company may ask of you" or have deal with attempts to have the contracts amended post signing and many months into them in order to benefit the company.......... :sad:

They are going to struggle to fill the vacancies as the pool is small and incestuous and everybody talks...... :=

Bose-x,

I agree with much of what you say, but I think the issue will not be recruitment, but rather retention. People need jobs to pay the Bills, and most will take what is on offer from Ascent as a quick and easy fix. However, it is clear from speaking to colleagues who already work for Ascent that their pay and t's and c's, leave policy etc are poor. Of course TUPE will protect the transferees, but given the planned syllabi, working hrs etc, people will quickly look elsewhere I suspect.

I have to wonder what will happen to those rearcrew protected by TUPE who find out they don't fit in the Juno?

If the mil hit their quota it might not matter too much, but the experience within DHFS is mostly civilian and these are the people that the system can least afford to lose (and Ascent are planning to make some of them redundant - but of course this reduces the wage bill .

I agree on the retention. They are all ready losing people. But replacement I think is definitely going to be an issue for them, certainly on the ME training side as there is just not the supply of people out there. Its going to be interesting to see where the current outsource request is going to go. I am watching with interest the responses and questions being asked by potential ATO's.

The outsource request

Bought several Phenoms (oops completely wrong ac type, yes I have flown it)
Currently have a course/sim/King Airs (flown that too, perfect for students)
Awarded the contract 2010ish

Brewery closed as no-on could organise the P*ss up

:D

I agree, the Phenom is the wrong aircraft for the job. What should have happened in my opinion is 45 should have been given the shiny new building and a new sim and the Kings Airs replaced with new ones. Ascent are trying to run a civilian company like an air force sqn without the ability to impose military discipline on the civilian workforce. But then I guess this is what happens when you put senior RAF officers with no commercial experience into commercial positions. They have no idea what to do with people when they "run out of rank"...... In the civilian world its called work place bullying...... ;)

With only 5 x Phenom about which to worry, why on earth is this 'training organisation' now having to advertise for a Chief Pilot 'Responsible for the delivery of all flying aspects of ME Pilot training at RAF Cranwell', whose 'essential' experience must have been as an A2 QFI 'or civilian equivalent'. What, pray, is the civilian equivalent of an A2 QFI? I see that they're also having to advertise for ME instructors - isn't that rather too late at this stage?

Anyone with half a brain would have ensured that they had secured the relevant assets before exposing themselves to liabilities.

Are the Phenoms doing much flying yet? Or is that a silly question.

What an utter goat this is....:rolleyes:

They are advertising for ME Instructors because they can’t keep the ones they have......

No the aircraft have not flown.

They have interviewed a lot of people for the chief pilot role including candidates with both Phenom experience and civil Senior ATO Training management experience. What they mean by civilian equivalent is an Air Force A2 Wing Commander that’s just leaving the Air Force and therefor a civilian.......

Although I understand that the preferred candidate has now very wisely withdrawn from the running. Not suggesting for a moment that they were just playing the HR process to demonstrate they were following governance for a moment......

I mean what Wing Commander would jump ship to run a team of 4 civvie Instructors?

The other thing they badly mismanaged for the civilian guys was expecting them to give up civilian qualifications that were hard won in order to operate under some sort of log book sign off and an assurance they were legal to fly........

It does appear that Ascent seem to think it is a foregone conclusion that the current incumbents of the instructor positions are desperate to come across and grateful for whatever they get.

Most probably will go across, but only in the short term. Phenom, Airbus 135/145...goodness me, some lovely types to put on the old licence...and then get a far higher paying position in the real world, with much better T's and C's.

This could have been fantastic. Flying as a civilian but doing it to mil regs and limits sounds almost too good to be true! However, if you speak to current Cobham civvys working on the DHFS contract, they say that Cobham 'get it'. They pay the going rate. Ascent pay less. Cobham give a decent leave allowance. Ascent give less.

Wherever Ascent is concerned, 'Less' seems to be the answer.

That is why people will walk as soon as they can. That is, of course, if they actually fit in the aircraft and are offered a job in the first place😕

To this day I am unsure if Ascents attitude is ignorance or arrogance.

They do not have a single person actually qualified to fly the Phenom. They have a few people who have done the CAE course in Dallas that never completed the whole course and don’t hold type ratings who to this day (apart from a couple of people who did some test flights at Embraer) have never flown the aircraft. These same people are being told to write the Training course because LM who are actually paid to produce the course have not done so. Those part trained people were asked to produce a second generation of pilots in order that Ascent could make the second generation write the manuals..... This resulted in at least one Instructor having the strength of their convictions and quitting.

Trying to change contracts of people AFTER they have done the training and bond them for a type Rating they don’t hold? Trying to change contracts from a 7:30-17:30 to 06:00-00:00 with no overtime payments or time off in lieu. Contracts that automatically elect people out of the working time directive (illegal).

I have said this before, expecting civilians to tow the line like military personal who have little choice is not the way to engender staff loyalty.

TBH, if you're not directly involved or a shareholder, I would leave it to those who are to try to sort it out rather than getting so het up with something you aren't involved with.


Just a thought.

It’s a discussion group and I suspect that a good many on this thread are or (now were) directly involved..... Just a thought.... ;)

Meanwhile, on a tropical island just off the coast of Wales. All of the students were sent home on a six month gardening leave before Xmas, as there is nobody to teach them.

Then, only 3½ months later, they are told to come back. They will need to get back up to speed and try to start learning the aircraft again. In the next 12 to 14 months, all of the experienced QFIs at Valley will be gone, some from Valley and some from the RAF.

Can it really be true that the Ascent contract has no provision for QFI training, only Pilots? That would mean that it's not Ascent's fault that their are no QFIs to teach the students. Who wrote this contract? I wonder if it is the same people who signed up for aircraft carriers that cost the same to not build, as to actually have them?

With Ascent being paid to produce new pilots out of Valley, to go to the squadrons, they will be able to get their money. When the well runs dry they can say that it is not their fault, and no doubt there will be a penalty clause, as the school is all geared up for students but has no teachers.


Maybe at that point Babcock can come along and (at huge cost) save the day with a host of recently ex RAF QFIs with Hawk experience. Maybe not, if by then the guys have gone to the airlines or Tabuk, to be treated like grown ups.

http://battle-updates.com/raf-valley...-advisory-ltd/

Howard Wheeldon FRAeS wrote this after a visit to RAF Valley:



So, that was almost a year ago, and still nobody seems to have addressed the issue.

This all seems far too much like the KFC fiasco with DHL - 'of course we can deliver what you want at lower cost..........ooooops we appear not to have any chicken':ugh:

Crab, I think it's more like.... We have some Turkey, but it's in the wrong warehouse / not ready / past its sell by date and basically not fit for purpose.

Just like the staff at DHL, the guys at the coal face in Anglesey, have been told to say and write nothing derogatory about this farce.

Well, only a month to go for the RW service to start at Shawbury and the same issues with courseware have been noted in the runup to that event,

The same message went to the staff on ME as well along with threats about posting on social media after realising that they could not identify culprits on a certain anonymous website even if they suspect they may know who they were....... :p:p

So, unless it really is as bad as some privately say, why are the staff not allowed to talk about it?

Are they perhaps trying to hide an even bigger fur cup?

Maybe it would be easier to accept if this was the 1970s Soviet war machine, where nobody talked about anything. However, the MOD/ASCENT/various business partners keep telling us how well its going.

Why can't we hear it from the horse's mouth?

Is there to be no open and frank discussion on the topic?

No wonder they can't retain staff. I've recently been told that the return of service for the guys holding for a Valley course (with no start date in sight) will not begin counting down until they get to the front line. In practical terms, they have been taken hostage by the UK Armed Forces.

Maybe that's just one reason for the forces of darkness to make them afraid to use the very freedom of speech, that the RAF was formed to defend.

And there is the conundrum.

In the last 18-24 months, Ascent have hired some seriously talented people. Ex CFI's, CFS personnel, Training Officers etc...basically the people you would hire if you owned the company - they are utterly superb.

Ascent hired them because they realized that their own staff were unable to do the job they were hired for.

Ascent had the chance to get all of the right people from day one...but they stayed true to form and hired the cheapest...it is all their HR 'experts😒' care about...HR lady who apparently knows far more about military flying training than anyone who actually does it)

They hired these experts (and they ARE experts - no tongue in cheek here) to 'test and adjust' the courseware to get it ready for Apr 18 (RW).

And here is the point...

These experts, hired FOR THEIR OPINION have been Officially told by Ascent to keep schtum and keep their mouths shut. Fact. This, in an organisation paid by the MOD???? It beggars belief!

I know many of these people. They say the aircraft are completely unfit for purpose. The courseware is written by morons. They say Ascent has no idea whatsoever about instructor training, or development, or a hundred other things that need to happen to make MFTS work.

Why did Ascent hire experts for their opinion and help, then tell them to shuttup?

Could it be that the answers are inconvenient?

Yep. They hired civilian experts who told them the same thing then effectively managed out more than one of them when they did not like the responses.

You have a bunch of ex senior officers with absolute zero commercial civilian experience thinking they can run a civilian contract as if it was an Air Force squadron. In the words of one of an ex group captain on the payroll “I realise I am Air Force institutionalised”.......

I've seen quite a few of those "I'm a Sqn Ldr / Wg Cdr" types - very many didn't last long in commercial circles.

Regrettably, this is the case.

I get what you are saying, even with the sarcasm, but the propensity for people who are not involved and cannot affect any outcomes to get involved in discussions they know nothing of never ceases to amaze me.


As you say, some are or were involved, but the vast majority aren't, so how are they supposed to tell the wheat from the chaff in these threads? I'm on the inside and I know there has been a lot of bolleaux typed on here, followed by incorrect supposition and ludicrous predictions of the end of the world (as we know it).

JAJ
 

I absolutely agree with you. I find it all a little unseemly when those not involved seem to rub their hands with glee at the thought of the system failing.

For those that are ex Military, it doesn’t make you look clever to constantly snipe from the sidelines.

Maybe just trust in those currently serving (and selected civilians) to continue to provide quality flying training.

I know that sounds a little optimistic and rose tinted but it doesn’t make anyone happier to hear constant whinging.

BV