That's how I see it eventually panning out, on my side of the fence ( Engineering ) part 145 was brought out in the EU to bring about commonality, prior to that each aviation body, the CAA etc, had different requirements, modifications, airworthiness directives etc, so the likes of Airbus were having to build subtle variants of each aircraft to suit each country, something that was stupid as they all would fly in each others airspace etc, therefore Part 145 came into being and it was one supposed standard across the EU. ( personally I feel that the system was dumbed down at the time to the lowest country, as it was easier to dumb it down than to raise up their standards)
The US have also adopted / moved towards a version of Part 145 to bring standardisation between the EU and the US, this in turn has spread the world over and most countries like New Zealand and Australia have a similar version to Part 145, so like it or not I cannot see the UK going it alone and doing their own thing, Part 145 is here to stay in my eyes and we will probably adopt most if not all of EASA's dross.

The problem comes in that the CAA is now a shadow of it's former self having passed most of the tasks to the EASA and a lot of the skilled and qualified through industry engineers etc have left to be replaced by fewer college graduates and clerks, none of which have the skill set I believe they need.

I knew an accident was going to happen, I did not expect it to be this soon but it was inevitable and it won't be the last one. Way too much time playing in the sim and no time on the aircraft and then wanting to go off an "play" with no proper training or experience on type doing stuff that it was not designed for and had only been briefly attempted during the proving trials. The aircraft is very difficult to fly in close formation because of the way it accelerates and decelerates which makes statin keeping very difficult. Combine that with doing 60 degree turns and inexperienced on type QFI and the holes in the swiss cheese line up quickly.

The Phenom is a great aircraft but it is not a great primary ME trainer and was a really bad choice for the job. The guys doing the job at the coalface are top notch guys who just want to deliver the best but the rest is just not joined up properly. Its just a civilianised version of 45 Sqn headed up by a load of ex military who jumped ship to take the jobs and have no understanding of how to operate in the civilian world both from the poor management of staff to a total lack of understanding of civilian regulation.

More than one person has quit in protest at the situation.

Accident, bose-x?

How many Phenoms are actually on the line at Cranwell these days...…??

Noted from the spotters logs at Cranwell, 8th August.

Phenoms ZM333, ZM334 and ZM337 noted at Cranwell. ZM335 and ZM336 at Waddington and reported as not flown since 3rd July.

Port wings of both of them parked up at Waddo not showing anything I can see, but then it might not the tip that's probably of concern, the wing root and attachment might be.

https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9022750

https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9013687

I don't think it will be the same wing on each aircraft, that has a problem.

I have followed this thread and am slightly bemused by some of the comments written about flying the Phenom, particularly in formation. I have flown it from the left seat in close formation (echelon left and right and close line astern in wing overs and turns up to 60 deg bank angle), albeit against a Kingair and not another Phenom. I thought that the field of view was satisfactory in all positions and that the thrust and drag characteristics allowed good fore and aft positioning. There has been criticism in some posts of both of these aspects which surprised me. However, I am quite surprised that there have been no comments on the high pitch control forces at stabilised high bank angles. Perhaps opinions depend on formation experience and recency.

One MFTS aspect that needs to be considered with the Phenom is the number of different types that ME pilot students from the course may fly. This is far greater and more varied that any of the other MFTS types and so whatever type is used for ME pilot training will always be a compromise.

Pure Pursuit,

Typhoon pilots Vs Lakenheath Pilots is probably not a comparison you can make. Debate the capabilities of the platforms and flying hours by all means, but until you have fought every pilot from both fleets I would suggest your claims are made on shaky ground.

Mr Vice.

That, right there, is truly awful.

Ghastly.

Opinion masquerading as fact.

Well, if the standard has not dropped, how are they managing to maintain it with a lot fewer hours for Pilots?

For the benefit of those who doubt the opinions expressed above:

I understand that with this being an anonymous forum, so data can be hard to verify, but for those who know people... ask around.

Which units are getting anything like enough hours in the air to be even half competent?

Reds: Probably.

Front line Typhoon and Tornado, including QRA: nothing like it.

Phenom: Who knows, given the shortage of airframes, and the flying needed to get their QFIs (the ones who haven't yet left) to the standard, what the long term picture is?

Transport & Tanking: Apparently some, but some of them are civvies, the rest of them are run into the ground on ops. The A400 pilots were struggling to achieve 200hours/annum. Not sure if this is still the case?

Hawk T2: No, advanced high tech sims are not the same thing. Great for as well as, but not instead of. I hear the convex for QFIs is taking well in excess of 12 months, at a very slow rate. Output rate, albeit with some overseas customers to satisfy, is blocking up a 2 year plus hold for baby pilots with no likely refresher. 'Downloading' training needlessly from Typhoon, and pilots lacking basic fast jet handling skills.

Hawk T1: No idea, but they seem busy enough.

ISTAR: No idea, but imagine RJ and E3D crews must be struggling, due to high unserviceability rates.

Rotary: Training; Students are flying, and Instructors are doing an awful lot fewer (P1) hours in the air than they used to. Ops; Previously flown to exhaustion, which is as bad as not flying enough. Now showing large reductions.

Prefect: Too early to say, but probably not. Have they resolved the over torque issues yet? That's not exactly care free handling.

Texan: Ask me in 2019, when it just might have permission to fly in the UK.

Air Cadets: Don't make me laugh.

If standards haven't dropped, why is it that Air Command now say that "flight training is now to be to an acceptable minimum standard at the cheapest contractual price"? The previously used term "excellence" has been dropped.

That looks to me, as if even 22 Group have decide to settle for less.

Airpolice
 

Back when retention seminars were held at RAF Waddington, one of my QFI colleagues told the 4-star chairing the session was that the reason he was PVR-ing was "Because we've been told that the RAF no longer trains for excellence, just for adequacy".

"Whoever told you that?" asked the 4-star, clearly unimpressed.
"OC Staneval, sir" my colleague replied.


Colleague is now a Virgin Atlantic captain - and the 4-star himself took early retirement!

Rumour only - dent in cabin roof of one of the Phenom cabs at Waddo. Cat ?

Bob, I don't want a fight with you, I just want everyone to know the truth.

I am of course long since departed for civvy street. You don't know who I am, but I know who you are. That's not really relevant.

You are still serving, and you are very close to the action, particularly regarding the T2. So consider this; anything that you can say, about the T2 fleet and the flow of students, should be taken as either absolute truth or malicious lies, intended to deceive. That's based on the premise that you would know, wouldn't you?

So, if you can tell us on here about what happens in the T2 fleet, why do think that I don't know people on the other fleets who can tell me the same thing?

How many hours a month have you flown in the last year?

The next time you speak to a Typhoon Pilot, ask him the same question. Ask any of the Reds how many hours a month they averaged last year. Ask any of Beagle's vintage how many hours a month they used to do, and whether or not they think they would be as comfortable doing the current hours. I an sure that you will have read National Audit Office report on Military Flying Training 2015 which, although three years old, tells a sorry tale of seven years from joining the RAF to getting combat ready. I'm not say that the report is pleasant, I'm not even saying it's accurate, as much like some AAIB stuff I have been reading recently, the (lack of) attention to detail is shocking, and the numbers don't always add up.

Even so, despite all of the promises and money that has been committed to the new world order in training, the RAF are certainly no better off. The flying hours have been cut for the students, the duration of training has been cut and people are arriving at the OCU without the same level of experience that they used to have. Most shocking in that for me, was that the Audit discovered that the failings and lack of experience, was not a culture that was being recorded or fed back.

Here we are 11 years after the contract was awarded, and even you couldn't honestly say that it has gone well.

Three years since that report came out, a rethink of how the business would manage to turn things around, a collection of new plans and timetables.. here we are, still short of bodies and a backlog in the holding system.

I recall a time when the output from the OCU was the best of the people who had applied. Nowadays it looks like it might just be those who have had the patience to stick around long enough.

Airpolice
 

airpolice wrote: Mate, you have to remember that the aircraft I flew were decidedly mandraulic compared with today's FJs. On my brief time on the F-4 I think we got about 20-25 hours per month; also the simulator wasn't much use for practice intercepts. Even in training, the Gnat used most of one's mental capacity trying to stop it from killing you and it didn't have enough fuel for more than about 50 min airborne time.

The Hawk was much easier to fly, so students were stretched by longer, more demanding trips. At TWU, weaponeering was simpler in the Hawk; we didn't have the Hunter's GGS, but neither did we have those infernal cine mags. But course progress at Brawdy was worse than at Chiv, because we did level bombing rather than SNEB and were less hampered by cloudbase at Pembrey. Nowadays I gather that there is no live weaponeering at Valley on the Hawk T2 and most applied flying is synthetic. OK, the simuators are probably a lot better than the one we had, but applying yourself at 1g is a lot different than at the normal 4g we used for low level manoeuvring or 6-7g for doggers. Pre-RAFFT too, so most people weren't iron-pumping gym queens and found they were quite fit enough to cope with ACM without any 'fitness routine'.

I'm told that the Typhoon is easy to fly, but quite complex to operate in many environments. So hardly surprising that less airborne time is required nowadays. But how will Typhoon and F-35B pilots maintain g tolerance with low airborne time?

Anyway, back to the Phenom. Is 40% of the fleet still U/S? As for the cause, that's bound to leak out one day and I'm surprised that the press haven't already reported it. But why on earth do Phenom pilots need to be taught to fly at anything more than 30 deg AoB in formation, given that's about all any of the RAF's ME fleet needs to use as singletons.

Clearly not flying the Phenom unless you are referring to sim time..... ;)

Because the military QFIs wanted to do it because they had always done it on the Kingair and the "reasoning" was that one day they might be flying something that was air refuelled but mostly because it was fun to do. It was pointed out to them by a now departed Civilian Instructor that it was inappropriate and would end up in a crash........ In fact there was no need for formation flying at all (and they wont be getting it with L3) and that it should be left to OCU. Unlike flying a Kingair where station keeping is simpler because of the noise and feel and visual aspects of the turboprop, the Phenom is just too slippery and not designed for the task. There were numerous crashes in the sim practicing it as well which is when it became pretty obvious that it was not appropriate. Now the inevitable has happened and they have had a prang. The next thing that comes assuming they ever get operational will be students with no time on type being sent of on consolidation flights without an Instructor as is planned and banging one in. Mark my words.....

I see where Bose is coming from. Jumping from a Jetstream/King Air into a pocket rocket like a Phenom is a biggish step. If you don't adapt your training syllabus enough, you're going to be bitten. The issue is not unique to the RAF; I've come across a number of people who think that a BE350/200 Type Rating can be easily morphed into an Eclipse 550 TR.

I doubt there will be anyone, let alone students, flying consolidation flights with no time on type! Or was that another poorly worded post where you meant low time?

The Phenom is not a pocket rocket, it's a relatively simple - certainly very easy to fly - small twin. The transition from the Prefect to the Phenom will be very straightforward and far easier when compared to previous airframe changes such as: Chipmunk-JP, JP-Hawk, Gazelle-Wessex to name but a few.

If you want a pilot who can only operate within quite a narrow environment (take off, transit, land), stay well clear of any limits, operate rigidly iaw very restrictive SOPs then perhaps the civilian CPL type course is the way to go. However, if you want a pilot who needs to be able to fly perhaps at LL, air-air refuelling, para drop, ISTAR or tanking to the absolute limit of your endurance, as part of a multi-aircraft package, with aircrews from other nations and using very different SOPs, to the extremes of your aircraft's accepted limits, then I would argue the CPL route doesn't work. You need a pilot that's had exposure to various skills - including basic formation - and most certainly on a few carefully considered sorties 'solo' ie without an instructor on board.

I've seen both systems close up, each have their pros and cons; but please don't think that sending a pair of well trained students, thoroughly briefed, on a well planned local sortie is unwise. It's an essential part of the military pilots' training and confidence building.

I don't get what Bose is saying at all. Virtually all our M/E fleets have a requirement for close formation and it would be utterly ridiculous to take an RJ, E-3D or P8 out of operational service to teach multi-engine formation trip 1. Formation flying gets harder as aircraft size increases - in IMC and on the wing your eyes can be a long way from the fuselage you are formatting on. Add in heavy aircraft inertia, large turbine engine spool-up time or turboprop effects on trim and lift you can have a lot going on.

If the Phenom is not up to the task (and that is a very big if) the solution is not to kick the can down the road and try and teach formation basics on an even more expensive and challenging aircraft.

Thats what happens when you cut and paste the old Kingair Training manuals to make new ones......

I think you're being a bit generalist there and somewhat disparaging of the civil world. Like you I've seen both sides (23 years light blue, 12 years 'gold bars') and the ethos are indeed quite different. But your assertion that you need to follow the military 'higher risk' ethos may be flawed. Personally, I now fly to far lower and sometimes more complex limits than the RAF ever authorised (try asking the RAF for fixed wing authorisation to 35ft MSD :) ). To date I haven't pranged an aircraft so I'm guessing that the civil training and oversight system is currently working. :)

The real difference ins in how the two worlds approach Risk and that was the driver behind my previous comments. To quote you:

That is exactly the way the civil world would NOT approach risk. It would not assume that today's transition is easier than previous generations. It would look at the issues with a completely clean sheet of paper. It would wonder why the FJ world thinks it needs to transition from Prefect to Hawk T2 via Texan with nothing similar for the ME world.

The reality is that the RAF have managed to scare themselves (and probably incur a few unplanned costs) by nudging together a couple of Phenom. For sure someone at Abbey Wood will be looking at it in depth, but one question should be "When did we last have a formation mid-air, what did we do about it and what has changed to affect our original mitigation?". The follow-up question should be "How did we manage that change?".

PS. You touched on JP-Hawk transition. Back in the heady days of the Cold War, a young CGB had about 180hrs JP time before being pushed-off to Valley. I'm guessing the equivalent number is far less now.

What should have happened with the ME training is they should have gone for something like DA42 for the ME and then the Phenom for advanced transition training before moving onto OCU. This is being done very successfully in Finland for example. Instead you have very inexperienced pilots going from the Grob TP to the Phenom with the majority of the hours in the sim. We have to ask if the MAA are actually maintaining proper oversight of this?

How many ME fleets pemit the copilot to fly AAR (well, are not supposed to the copilot fly AAR)? My experience it was a commander only thing. So by the time bloggs gets a first go, by my reckoning, he should have 3+ years under his belt on a large heavy. Plus, for high gain flying such as this, a full motion SIM often does an excellent job at preparing them for AAR. Does the phenom training package include a level D SIM like most of our heavy fleets possess?

We had an AAR prodding programme in the full motion VC10 simulators. As it was 2-D and had no 'g' simulation, it was utterly useless and made pilots think that they'd never be able to cope with real prodding. A total waste of time and we refused to use it as it was simply of negative training value; as an AARI, I never came across a VC10 pilot who couldn't cope with the real thing far more easily.

BUT they needed to have had some basic formation training to understand the basics (forward, up, in etc.) and to feel reasonably comfortable flying in close echelon or line astern. Co-pilots needed this too; although they were only allowed to prod if flying with an AARI on an opportunity basis, they had to be able to take control if the other pilot were to become incapacitated.

Close formation in a Phenom at up to 30 deg AoB I can understand. More than that is just risky showboating.

On ME aircraft, several thousand hours as an A2 QFI, IRE, AARI on the VC10 & VC10K, thank you very much. And you, FixClrEnt?

ME aircraft do NOT fly 'routine pairs departures' or 'radar-to-visual' recoveries in close formation. 30 deg AoB is quite adequate for AAR manoeuvring as it gives a slight margin over the standard max bank angle of 25 deg; higher bank angles are simply not required. They also pose the risk of exceeding buffet boundary limits or g limits.

There is NO need for the Phenom to be flown in close formation at higher bank angles, although some experience as a singleton at higher bank angles may be of benefit for those who will later fly the A400M or C-130J in the tactical role.

FixClrEnt wrote: Yes.
ME pilots do not need to fly at bank angles in excess of 30 deg AoB in the aircraft at all. If necessary, they can do that in the simulator.
.

BEagle

Would not your proposal lead to adequate training rather than training for excellence?

I don't think so, beardy, it's questionable whether there is any need at all for Phenom pilots to fly in close formation. But if they do, it should be limited to the types of formation appropriate to large ME aircraft.

Higher risk activity can be flown in the simulator and any role-specific needs should be taught at the relevant OCU.

I was thinking of aircraft handling, not specifically formation flying. Confidence is born and nurtured in the aircraft itself. I know that the unfortunate Air France pilots had flown their simulator in extreme conditions, it's part of the Airbus programme used by Air France which trains adequately, but not to excellence and for routine operations, not combat operations.