I see that the RAF offers apprenticeships in many trades -- my father's old one, airframe fitter, starts at £25k and can rise to £40k if promoted to Corporal. How this compares to civvy street I don't know, certainly the RAF would need to match civvy rates if it wants to retain its experienced engineers. Having grown up in the quality MQs of t he 1940s and 50s I am shocked at the state of so much military accommodation, surely this has to deter anyone from making a career in the RAF or any Service come to that. Maybe not just the engineers are undervalued.

I would suggest that corporal is the equivalent of a licensed engineer. That is someone who signs for his own work and that of others. In commercial aviation airline/offshore helicopters that would probably bring in £60 plus.
Apprentices were being paid £25k 15 years ago with a further pay rise when they went to mechanic.!!!!!
Another issue is rate of time to promotion.
Cannot speak for whay happens today but at one time promotion to corporal in the air force was slow and to sergeant was dead mans shoes.
Army promotion was about 2 years to corporal and another 3 to sergeant.
Hence at one point quite a few RAF corporals transferred to the army. Couple of courses and promoted sergeant.
Working for a UK major airline I was on about £52k 18 years ago.

Today Trainee mech about £30k, mech about 40k to 50K, LAE about 70k plus. That’s roughly what you get.

Thanks for all the info, I suppose this thread title says it all as far as the political masters of the RAF are concerned: Undervalued Engineers. My poor old Dad must be turning in his grave. The Labour crowd are said to be planning £17m of defence cuts, Putin sees continued conquest on the Trump return to power, while the MidEast cauldron is furiously boiling. Yesterday The Times reported on a survey revealing that one in ten of Generation Z don't know how to change a light bulb, one in five won't go up a stepladder because it may be dangerous, and almost half of them cannot identify car components such as the alternator. Sunday Times ran a feature on how to use an electric drill. Heaven help us.

ericferret wrote (inter alia:)
I don't know what period Eric is referring to. As a direct entry fitter fairy in the 1960s, signing on for 9 years service (the minimum period for highest pay scale) I was a Corporal in less than 4 years from attestation and a Sergeant less than 8 years, completing my last 18 months service as an SNCO. Trade promotion was automatic if one passed the necessary exams and had at least average assessments. Although normal practice was to move one on promotion to Sergeant (if only to a different Squadron on the same station) I was left where I was, as I was effectively running the section for large periods of time anyway.

Just a small point re the underlined above. When the RAF had 22 trade groups, this was indeed the case for non technical trades, although as an aside, why Safety Equip were classed as such was an insult, but not so for technical trades and there was a pay disparity between both groups.

The RAF however have never had a satisfactory promotion chain / progression for airmen. The so called "time promotion" produced a surplus of C/T's for example, so the answer from " manning " , or zimmer frame central, was to insist on assessments being raised to unheard of numbers and "Spec Reps ". even then it was the luck of the draw. Not forgetting the RAF had an obsession for many years with "single trades"....A & C being the normal in civilian life of course.

The pay issue became prominent at the end of the 70's / early 80's when " manning " woke up one day and realised there was an excessive amount of PVR's being submitted.

There has always been a disparity between civil military maintenance providers, from the past Airworks being the most obvious, but who made up the difference with enhancements for things like towing or keys. Clearly, that disparity mindset remains if they are reluctant to pay the going rate(s) for LAE's.

The current RAF apprenticeship bears no resemblance to the past. The basic AMM course provides enough training to ensure they are safe when they become productive....the SAC(Tech) course does go into slightly more depth, but nowhere near the levels many on here would have experienced. As for promotion to Cpl, possible, but again, much depends on how involved they become with secondary / tertiary duties.

The military will never rival civilian pay scales, but, will continue with the "30 days leave / accom / dental and medical treatment / adventure training" to try and compensate as an attraction to joining.

I’m an ex RAF aircraft engineer (A Tech AV) and would like to add my thoughts and experiences. Hopefully some policy maker will read and learn why theres a shortage of Engineers…

It’s a retention issue not just a recruitment issue.

The problem with aircraft engineering is how long it takes to for someone to become suitably qualified and experienced (SQEP). You can’t simply replace an engineer with 22 years experience with a kid who’s fresh out of school. It takes years to gain the knowledge for fault finding and the knacks of what to do when things inevitably don’t go to plan.

RAF Trade Training now seems to be ran by the accountants. By having the recruits in the training pipeline for the bare minimum amount of time. The training has got so cut back that the system is now kicking the can down the road. Recruits are turning upto a frontline squadron knowing nothing, without being taught any flight line operations. So frontline squadrons are now expected to teach their new arrivals what was originally taught at Cosford.

From what I’ve seen. The RAF changed in pension scheme, so the new guys joining now don’t get awarded an immediate pension if they were to stay in for 22 years. They only get a pension at 65 regardless of how long they serve. So there’s no longer any retention incentive, such as the “pension trap”.

The PVR rate is not just about the money, but the conditions in the RAF compared to having a civilian job instead. In my own opinion Junior Ranks in the RAF are treated poorly, patronised and talked down to. There’s still a Victorian class-system culture, where Junior Ranks are treated like second class citizens. I can’t think of any civilian job where I’d be told where I can and can’t live or eat.

On recent OOAs we’d be living in transit accommodation that’s literally not fit for a prisoner and deliberately provided with the worse food that PAYD could get away with. My thoughts were a civilian would never accept this back home and have a much higher quality of life.

“That’s life in a blue suit” … but we did not join to be worse off than the alternative careers that we could have had.

The retention posters that say we should stay in the RAF for the adventure training and dental care, but don’t see the bigger picture. On a undermanned and busy frontline squadron, it’s very difficult to get time off work to attend sport and AT. The dental care is no better than civilian life if you’re waiting months for an appointment with the med centre.

From what I’ve experienced working alongside a big name civilian aerospace company. They’re no alternative to RAF manpower. As this civilian company is entirely driven by profit. They won’t touch anything that won’t make them money. For example, if they’re contracted to fix 8 widgets a month then the RAF will only be getting 8 widgets and no more, regardless of how many are sat on the shelf U/S

Well said, I couldn't agree more. My father was making similar comments, particularly the class structure, when he left the RAF in 1962.

I suspect he's talking about the 1990s. Frontline First/Options for Change and the peace dividend meant promotions from Cpl to Sgt were few and far between.

Does Line Training at Cosford not exist anymore? I taught there in the early 00s and I always thought it was outdated and badly focussed even then. All we produced was people who could carry out a 4-man servicing on a 1950s training aircraft. We had a visit from some sqn training cells, who told us that mechs arriving on the sqns insisted they hadn't received the training that they absolutely had. The trainers were shocked to see all the training objectives that were printed on the back of the training certificates! Also, the AMMs (at the time) were not being used to their fullest extent when they got to the sqns. Most were just used as lineys with no trade experience being given, even though the Mechs and AVs had first sig in both trades.

I fell foul of the 1990 Options for Change cull. I was coming to the end of a 13 year stretch and was offered an extension to 22yrs (age 40). At the time I was a JNCO and "Q'd" on Harriers and Sea Kings, the seven year extension came with the caveat that I could not expect any promotion. Ummmm, let me think about........., where's the door? I left, retrained as a merchant marine engineer and continued my engineering odyssey elsewhere culminating in a Senior Superintendents post broadly comparable to that of OC Eng Wing.
Engineers, sons of Martha, will always play second fiddle to the captain but a ship could not sail without their input, skill, and team leadership. In my experience when the chips are down it is often the calm reassurance of the Chief that enables the captain to make the necessary decisions.
The amount of continuous professional development required to stay on top as an engineer is quite demanding and does warrant a little more respect. I'm surprised that this is not the case with the RAF seeing as the CAS is an engineer?

If RAF leaders were still promoted on the ability to deliver operational effect, engineers would be more valued. As a member of the aircrew fraternity I had the deepest respect for my spanner wielding colleagues at Odiham, and we all worked and played well together because we understood each others contribution (there were exceptions on both sides, but they were the exception and broadly detested by all) . Today's leaders have a completely different set of deliverables, and that consigns engineers (and personnel in general) to line items on a spreadsheet.

I feel for the engineering trades, they will always have my respect. But LAME's on the outside are respected - I'll just put that out there.....

Defence cuts by Tories in real terms has be way more.

Part of the problem in the UK is in the language. In Europe a qualified Engineer often has a title prefix similar (in status) to a doctor, whereas most Brits see the holder of a spanner as an engineer and thus expect to treat and pay engineers accordingly.

Forgive the cut'n'paste, but Google tells that:

Engineers design, build, and maintain systems and structures, while mechanics repair and maintain machines and vehicles.

Design and creation

• Engineers: Design, analyse, and build systems and structures, such as vehicles, machines, and processes. They also oversee construction projects and run quality control tests.
• Mechanics: Repair, maintain, and troubleshoot machines and vehicles. They also perform routine maintenance and assemble mechanical components.

Work environment

• Engineers: Work in offices, laboratories, industrial plants, construction sites, and oil and gas exploration and production sites.

• Mechanics: Work in cramped spaces, such as inside vehicles, and are often exposed to contaminants like antifreeze and degreasers. They almost always wear protective gear.

Education

• Engineers: Usually have a university degree with a strong understanding of math, physics, and design.

Specialties

• Mechanics: May specialize in a particular type of machine, such as cars, tractors, or heavy machinery.

Even EASA dumbed it down, the Old CAA section L licence holder has Aircraft Engineers Licence on the cover, but the EASA one changed it to Aircraft Maintenance Licence, thus at a stroke of a pen they dumbed down the qualification.

Remember the late 70’s when the RAF had a glut of Chief Techs, so they offered them incentives to leave, all the good, highly skilled, and motivated folks who knew they would do well out in the wide world left, and what remained was sadly pitiful.


..

I do remember that redundancy round. I was at Wildenrath on 3(F) and we lost the best Chief on the Sqn. I recall being baffled by the policy.

Historically any voluntary redundancy scheme the RAF has run, for whatever branch/trade, has seen many of the best, most capable, people leave - and the dead wood stay.

It also tends to lead to a short term uptick in the PVR rate - as individuals who applied for voluntary redundancy but didn't get it elect to leave anyway, as they have already mentally made the transition to civilian life, with the support of their wife/family.

Ironically enough, the increase in PVRs after a voluntary redundancy round has in the past lead to a shortage in the very branch/trade which had literally just been in surplus!!

In the civil world, licensed aircraft maintenance engineers, are treated with respect, and receive remuneration commensurate with the level of their certification privileges.

Starting pay for B1/B2 engineers, with a couple of type ratings with Jet2 is north of 100k. Wages do vary, with the U.K. median being around 60k.
The engineer title used by licensed aircraft engineers, is specific to them, due to the level of their certification privileges, and must meet the recognised ICAO standard.

Thanks wotpb, I'm so glad to hear this. I was proud to hold the LAME licence and valued it more than my PPL/IR, maybe because I had to work so bloody hard to get it. All credit to the LAMEs out there, they deserve the respect you mention as well as the salary to honour it. I've long given up on the "engineer" who arrives to fix the washing machine, hook up the telephone wires, install the gas boiler etc etc.
My other regret is that the RAF or maybe its senior officers doesn't appear to follow the above precepts, and as for politicians ...

Ericferret, I would say that a LAME is higher than that of a Corporal, a Corporal cannot I believe be a Camo and renew an ARC, that would be a Wing Commander normally in the RAF.

I'd agree with Nutty.

RAF Corporal can certify his own work and that of juniors, but (unless things have changed) cannot sign as coordinator of the F700; perhaps the nearest equivalent to ICAO CRS. Similarly, it requires a type rated SNCO to certify military Indies/Dupes, so perhaps that is closer to the mark.

Like a lot of the crossover between civil/military equivalents, it's a tough one to call. In my experience, LAMEs routinely get our hands as dirty as any military mechanic, but also use their breadth of knowledge and experience to make judgement calls on, say, deferral of defects equivalent to that of a military engineering officer.

As a line engineer for an Airline, your assessment is spot on. I am unrestricted B1.1 and only the deeper tasks in ATA 22, 23 and 34 are outside my remit. I am responsible for every certification from a wheel change to the Engineering officer sign offs within my company approvals. Only Form 4 holder tasks and specialist tasks I am not signed off to carry out are outside my remit. My pay reflects that now as equivalent to a Sqn Ldr band.

LAE under section L is really a technician status. Those that also mention mechanics are wrong as AML licence holders under EASA are technicians as they are able to troubleshoot.

As an RAF Corporal, I was able to Co-ordinate a F700 and release for flight. What I couldn't do was close open jobcards. So as long as nothing is reported by crew & nothing is found during flight preparation I could release the aircraft. As soon as maintenance is required (other than that needed for flight preparation) I would have to get the jobs signed off as complete by a SNCO or above. But that is no different than for the aircrew, who were also able to do this and they have a degree in sociology not engineering!

Could co ordinate 707Bs on a sqn as a Cpl when I was doing so 20 years ago. Just could not scope or certify Indies.

A B1/B2 licenced aircraft engineer with the right qualifications and authorisations can have the same certification rights from certifying a daily inspection up and including that of an RAF Wing Commander doing reds and greens, plus taxiing to ground running and parking slots and doing those tasks too. Obviously they cannot do it all on their own but, if needed, they might even be authorised to certify their own independent inspections. Authorisations are managed through the 145 organisation. The LAEs work is all done with communications to the aircraft’s CAMO who may at worst disagree with the LAEs fault finding. Qualified and authorised LAEs also train and recommend other staff for authorisations too. May I remind you that a CAT C LAE can only sign off a defined scheduled maintenance visit (i.e. depth maintenance not line maintenance).

OED definitions for ‘engineer’ has so many variations so I find it’s best to use the verb: “To engineer a solution or result”.

Indeed. C cert is base maintenance work pack sign offs. Some deferrals are set in stone by CDL/MEL. I only refer to CAMO if the manuals do not allow me to investigate or rectify an issue as it is beyond my scope. Tech enquires, etc from TC holders for damage etc. As you mentioned, we are now the oral boards if authorised to assess OJT for first type ratings and for basic licence qualifying tasks. We do have lower level verification inspections that allows us to do some tasks that should have a second pair of eyes, but my company view of independent inspections is they remain such. Highly unlikely to get a one off certification for such.

I do not use it in my current position, but I am a form 4 holder. I was also a Camo, LAME, C Cert’er, form 4 holder, all rolled into one.

Basically I did it all, I even had to write the Company Exposition and the Maintenance schedules lol.

So I wrote the maintainable programme, carried out that programme, certified and cleared that programme, had camo oversight on that work and issued the Arc renewal.

;)

Is that for RYR? 🤣🤣🤣 only joking..

Would I encourage anyone to join the RAF as a aircraft engineer? I should do, but what are they going into? Limited locations that more than half most of us would put in as negative choices to go and to establishments where manning such a problem that people I know just have had enough. Yes the comradeship is way better than civvy street, but a 30 year old LAE is going to be on way more cash than a 30 year old Cpl.

Yes, but a Corporal would more likely know what he was looking at.
The idea that you would need to be a Wg Cdr to undertake that function is quite comical and probably why the RAF is in the state it is in!

Had a discussion with a Sqn Ldr at a secret RAF training establishment about reds and greens being used by the RAF LAEs and the reasons it was not given to them (where it is part and parcel of my day). The answer was to give EngOs a reason to exist outside a man manager.

And on top of that an LAE is also a man manager lol.

Bit of drift, but Rigga mentioned authorisation for engine runs and taxying. Never understood why the average UK technician could be authorised to act as tug driver, brakeman, lookout and overall supervisor of a towing operation and ground running engines throughout the ground-range but, with a few exceptions (eg some training establishments) technicians are categorically forbidden to be considered for taxi approval. In my own experience;

Base Maintenance input; military scenario. Aircraft lands from operational sortie at 12.00. Debrief in the line-office. Request a tug at 12.30 to take aircraft to the ground running area for pre-check engine tests. 13.00, arrive ground running area. 1315, ground running team arrives at the aircraft by landrover, as the military tug only accomodates driver and one passenger. 14.00, ground runs complete (took 40 minutes including airframe systems tests) request tug. 14.30, aircraft delivered to Base Hangar.

Base Maintenance input; civil scenario. Aircraft lands from operational sector at 12.00 Debrief at the aircraft whilst passengers disembark. 12.15, engineers start and pushback, taxi to ground running area. 12.50, ground runs complete (took 20 minutes because airframe systems test completed during taxi). 13.00, aircraft delivered to Base Hangar.

I think it's one of the areas where military legacy attitudes have inhibited the general leap forward in efficiency of maintenance operation.

I can only speak for the Typhoon fleet, but that scenario just doesn't happen. Purely my guess, but around 95% of EGRs can be carried out where the aircraft was parked. Anything above mid-power is rarely required. You're not going to A/F, refuel, download the brick and decide on a recovery plan in anywhere near 30 minutes. Fault diagnosis? Spares? Manpower? And a Land Rover?!

Todays Telegraph
 

Aircraft manufacturers should be riding high thanks to a travel boom that has created unprecedented levels of demand.

Bookings have surged as millions head to the beach and the predicted demise of face-to-face business meetings fails to materialise. Airports including London Heathrow have recently announced record passenger numbers.

Yet Airbus and Boeing are struggling to build planes fast enough to keep up with demand. Both manufacturers are falling short of delivery targets as their supply chains buckle under the strain.

British Airways, Ryanair, Virgin Atlantic and Wizz have all been forced to rein in their planned schedules and watch profits ebb away. The manufacturers themselves have been deprived of vital revenue and reduced to firefighting one production issue after another.

Across much of the aviation industry, what should have been a boom is turning out to be little more than a whimper. Waiting times for the most popular jets are now into the next decade.
The situation can be traced back to multiple causes, including a near-disaster involving a 737 jet that led regulators to cap output at Boeing and engine issues at companies including Rolls-Royce.

But Airbus last week highlighted a more basic factor at the heart of the crunch: the industry is suffering from what amounts to a severe case of long Covid, following the exodus of tens of thousands of experienced personnel during the pandemic.

Three years after the last Covid-related curbs were lifted, manufacturers are still woefully short of veteran engineers and technicians, says Christian Scherer, head of commercial aircraft at Airbus.

“What the supply chain has suffered the most from is a loss of expertise,” he says.

“A lot of people, with years and years of accumulated expertise, that have taken early retirement or have redirected their professional activities elsewhere. That takes a lot of time to rebuild. That’s really the fundamental, deep problem.”

The supply chain crisis last year forced Airbus to revise an 800-plane delivery target to 770 after barely four months. In the event it handed over 766 aircraft, still almost 100 short of the number shipped in 2019.

Scherer insists Airbus will reach those pre-pandemic production volumes “in the foreseeable future,” while adding: “I’m not going to tell you when.”

Boeing, meanwhile, revealed last week that it had delivered just 348 jets in 2024, down 180 on the previous year’s tally and less than half its pre-pandemic peak.
The US giant was plunged into crisis after a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max at 16,000 feet last January. Subsequent checks revealed safety and quality-control issues across the supply chain, leading regulators to cap Max output at 38 planes a month.

A Boeing insider later said that the depletion of the workforce during the pandemic meant it had to “turn baristas into engineers” – a reference to the location of the company’s main assembly lines in Seattle, home to Starbucks and a world centre for coffee roasting.

Potential recruits with a technical bent have meanwhile gravitated towards companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also based in the area.

Nick Cunningham, an aviation analyst at Agency Partners, said manufacturers should have seen the staffing problem coming and done more to replace the “big hump of middle-aged workers” who were set to retire around the same time with or without the pandemic.

“It was a collective error on the part of the industry on both sides of the Atlantic. It had become very dependent on a group of grizzled veterans.They all looked like members of ZZ Top and called themselves ‘shop rats’ but they actually did all the work.

“The new generation of recruits is just not as productive. They’re a green workforce and with many of the trainers also retiring it’s going to take years to get them up to speed.

“It becomes much more expensive because you are making fewer things, so volumes drop even though you’re employing the same number of people.”

At Airbus, bottlenecks are affecting the supply of components ranging from aircraft engines, cabin equipment, galleys and seats to toilet doors and even the bolts and washers that hold together sections of fuselage.

Shortages of interior items have been exacerbated by airlines seeking to refurbish cabins in ageing planes that are being kept in service precisely because of the lack of new jets.

Guillaume Faury, the chief executive of Airbus, said last week that shortages of even a simple part at a single supplier could be enough to derail a whole aircraft.

He said: “Because we are going at the pace of the slowest of our suppliers, when you think you are there, you are blind-sided by something you were not expecting.

“The number and depth of the crises that we managed last year was very significant. I don’t expect a lot of change in the nature of the problems.”

Attracting new workers is not the only problem manufacturers face. Cunningham says keeping them is also a challenge, even with the lure of relatively attractive pay deals.

He says: “They want a nice desk job where they can be on the internet all day. They don’t want to work in what can be a cold, noisy and occasionally dangerous environment doing something that is repetitive and really not that pleasant.”

Mounting concern about the production crunch was evident in Dublin last week, where aircraft leasing companies that collectively own and manage around half the world’s fleet warned that plane shortages would persist for years.
An over-dependency on ‘grizzled veterans’, or ‘shop rats’, has been blamed for plane-makers’ staffing struggles Steven Udvar-Házy, the executive chairman of Air Lease, told the Airline Economics conference that neither Airbus nor Boeing were meeting “any of their production targets” and had made “big judgment errors” in seeking to increase deliveries before stabilising their operations.

Denis Hogan, a founder of SMBC Aviation Capital, said it would take “until the end of the decade” to fully resolve the supply-chain issues.

Bosses were similarly pessimistic about a parallel crisis surrounding the poor resilience of engines supplied by Pratt & Whitney (P&W) and Rolls-Royce. Issues with engines have forced jets to be recalled for emergency maintenance, further depriving airlines of essential capacity.

József Váradi, the Wizz Air boss, said he had expected groundings of the airline’s A320s for the replacement of worn engines to span no more than two years, but it now appears to be “a four to five-year issue”.

Airbus insists that it is making progress addressing these issues. Dozens of staff are working to alleviate bottlenecks at suppliers such as Spirit, which makes wings for its A220 jet and supplied the faulty door panel to Boeing.

The European company has also formed a task force to address fastener shortages and a team dedicated to helping airlines procure cabin interiors. In some cases, Airbus is providing financing to companies that would otherwise be unable to provide parts at the required pace.

Despite the continued issues, plane-makers plan to boost build rates to reduce order backlogs. Faury said Airbus had no intention of backing away from plans to lift A320 production to 75 planes a month in 2027. That’s 50pc higher than average monthly deliveries last year.

The company is already able to produce aircraft on eight global assembly lines, with two more to be added by next year. Crucially, however, it needs the supply chain to keep in step.

The chief executive said: “It’s not nice to have customers complaining that you’re delivering late. But if we are too shy we waste opportunities to deliver planes. We need to find the sweet spot.”

MGD said:
" the industry is suffering from what amounts to a severe case of long Covid, following the exodus of tens of thousands of experienced personnel during the pandemic."

This sounds like lots of people just upped-sticks and moved way whereas 90% of 'the exodus' was due to the instant dismissals of the larger airlines' staff with dividends in mind and no thought for their recovery after Covid. As has been said on Pprune many times - experience (pilots, engineers, cabin staff, etc.) isn't kept on a shelf for immediate use. The airlines' dismissals brought on thousands of personal situation reviews and reactions.

Almost all over 55's retired (ca. 30% of all staff). A great many pilots and engineers retrained for new less pivotal jobs...plumbing, electricians, etc - I know of one ex-BA pilot who now delivers for Sainsbury's and is quite happy with the lack of stress. Several engineers I know went into Contracting. I went back to helicopters (who increased in workload throughout the pandemic). Cabin staff were also a dire shortage at one point and possibly still are.

There wasn't an exodus from airlines - there was a lot of lay-offs, a complete lack of support / loyalty and huge expectations by airlines as how they would recover with their ex-staff running back to them.

As for ground running and taxiing - Ground crew can ground run helicopters too - as long as there are company procedures to do it and the company has insurance to do it (confirmed by the CAA).

Thanks for picking up the gauntlet sbart.

My scenario was around an aircraft arriving for Scheduled Maintenance, which generally requires a purely diagnostic gound-run to establish pre-inspection parameters and latent defects, rather than to recify a specific snag and return the aircraft to service, but I think the principle applies to many situations. In general, the most quickest and most efficient way of moving an aeoplane is under it's own power, and if the "driver" is also a technician, then the possibility of fault diagnosis becomes viable.

You mention manpower; taxying requires an operator and 5 minutes of a despatch crew's time. Towing; a minimum of driver, brakeman and supervisor. Add to which, it is a fact of aviation law that an aircraft under tow has priority over an aircraft moving under it's own power, so that's an advantage? Wrong; we all know that Ground Movements Control will move heaven and earth to get taxying aircraft on and off the taxiways before they permit a slow towing operation to begin it's journey.

Land Rover? Showing my heritage, admitedly late 90's. What's the standard sqn grouncrew runaround now; some kind of hybrid SUV I guess ......

Didn't BA fire it's entire workforce then try and rehire (some of) them during covid?
Re taxiing aircraft, engineers at BCal used to taxi DC-10s around LGW. I think BA put a stop to that after the 'merger'.