Is that AEF, Gliding, or between both? Because I agree that is disappointing.
What do you think the causes for that are?
My perspective: I get notice of the allocation for 3 AEF places on a Saturday perhaps two weeks before.
That gives me three parade nights to try to sell sitting around on an airfield to a member of staff, and to get forms out to cadets.
At least one cadet will probably forget to return the forms, so I now I have one parade night to find a replacement who is being collected by a parent that can sign forms in time to get them submitted a week in advance.
We have a small squadron, and given how few cadets are able to commit there and then (most have to check with parents), this usually fails. I might then be able to contact another squadron to find a replacement, but they’ve probably already sent cadets home by now.
Solutions:
More notice - surely we could do allocations with 3 months notice?
Less admin - parents have already agreed to flying in service aircraft in the 3822A?
I’ll add that gliding is worse - we’re lucky to get a week notice.
And there’s no appeal to cadets to do PTT, so few of them will do it and therefore few are eligible to glide. I think we had 10% of the squadron eligible in March 2020.
They don’t want high quality flight training. They want to experience flying.
Well that in itself is a whole other issue - we have a pretty decent sim at our Sqn - but its not been approved by the powers that be to provide PTT training on (without spending a bucket load of dosh on)
Also myself (a current FI) and another CI (BA Training Capt.) have been told we’d go on a train the trainer course to be eligible to ‘teach’ Straight and Level on a simulator!
It is interesting to see people confirm they get 1-3 weeks notice of slots at Sqn level and this creates difficulty filling / reallocating them. Slots are given to RAvOs 6+ months in advance so you have to wonder what is happening in the internal RAFAC allocations process. Some cadets are flying 3 times per year, other Sqns say they haven’t had an allocation for years.
We used to get flying and gliding allocations sent out in 4 month chunks with a minimum 6 weeks notice. This worked very well for years. This then devolved into an email with a list of dates and bid for them. This was when we were told about unfilled slots and no shows. At round this time we had the medical form introduced. Makes you wonder if there is a correlation.
I couldn’t remember a ‘flying’ detail from my cadet days to the ‘invention’ of the med form, that cadets with a ‘medical problem’ went as we knew who could and couldn’t and were barred from actually flying.
Then we at sqns started to get the Thurs off Fri call off from the AEF or VGS citing all manner of reasons. Which became almost the norm and trying to get staff to commit a Saturday or Sunday to tale cadets became and has remained an uphill task for obvious reasons. Even cadets would ask “is it hapening?” the parade night before, it became something of a running joke. I’d never queried VGS or AEF happening for anything other than unforeseen things like a technical problem with several aircraft or poor weather at the AEF/VGS compared to where we were coming from.
Do these show up as unfilled allocations by Sqns on the stats?
Thank you for the detailed response, however this illustrates the point directly.
A Traffic Service and an ATCS are significant mid air collision risk mitigation measures.
We provide them for Tutor sorties (along with all the other stuff) to reduce the overall sortie risk to an acceptable level.
How do you then explain to a Coroner that you didn’t deem the same to be required just because the aircraft was a civilian schools for convenience of geography?
Are you being selective with which posts you reply to because you don’t actually know the answers and are making things up?
Where is your evidence for any of the numbers you spout?
Why, if having an ATCS and a traffic system is so important, do we routinely operate gliders without it?
Unless you start actually replying to the posts it does seem to me that you might be trolling. The perfect system you are describing does not exist for most of the end users. I’m unsure if you’re from an AEF or a VGS but simply put, the system cannot support us as its “customer”. That is not a slight at all on the pilots and other staff at ground level, but an indictment on the “management and leadership” at the top which is so sorely lacking and has been throughout Dawn and Middleton’s tenure. Everyone knew that one he left North Region he would ruin gliding, and surprise surprise we were proved right.
Changes to a syllabus that wasn’t broken, that locally VGS staff vehemently disapproved of. Lack of any meaningful aviation for cadets for 7 years (or is it 8?) Decimation of the opportunities.
It would take Trumpian levels of idiocy to even try and defend the output of the most important part of our organisation over the past near-decade, please don’t insult our intelligence by trying to do so.
In the same way that if I use an outside provider to deliver an AT activity, I don’t dictate how they do what they do, even if I’m qualified. Prime example being I can take cadets to Go Ape whilst at Windermere and they are completely covered by Go Apes RAs, Insurance etc etc. Even if they don’t do things to the same standard that would be expected of me if I deliver training.
No trolling, it would appear this forum only allows so many posts for new users.
I’ve never mentioned Traffic Service and ATCS for gliding - it is a totally different sortie profile and operating environment and not appropriate, hence we don’t apply it for VGS.
Not trying to defend anything, but in moving forward we have to recognise that there are more aspects to sort than just ‘AEF and VGS don’t provide enough slots’ which is constantly rolled out
This is however the fundamental issue though. As someone said above somewhere, even if all current VGSs were operating at capacity and never had to cancel any sessions there would still only be enough slots for 50% of cadets to get 1 slot a year.
I’ll ask once more - please provide some hard data on slots provided vs. slots lost due to various reasons so we can properly discuss the issue.
Not just a number you’ve typed into the forum - some recorded management information. If you don’t have it, then I have to ask why not as we can’t possibly be managing this extremely expensive resource very well at all.
And then I’ll get a bit more light hearted and say just chin flying off and buy everyone a mountain bike instead. They’ll have a much better time. You don’t have to drive for 2hrs to sit in a crappy portacabin all day for starters.
You cannot make anything 100% safe.
We use a local outdoor centre for activities and we get all their RAs, Insurance and instructor quals and include them in the approval. If something happens it’s between the parents and the centre, not with the Air Cadets, the parents know this and happily pay up. The same could easily be applied to flying and gliding and invent some jobs for the boys to do the visits and checks, along the way.
It has been said a 1000 times since 2014, no business could be sustained like 2FTS is if it wasn’t delivering what it’s meant to. People would go elsewhere. Fortunately for 2FTS and all who don’t fly in her, they are protected from real world economics and can still draw exorbitant salaries while failing to deliver.
Unfortunately we in the sharp end of the Air Cadets are stuck with a failed 2FTS and come to that dodgy 6FTS when we could be getting cadets airborne.
Please stop trying to defend something that has failed and pretending it’s our fault, because the odd slot might not get filled. The fault lies fair and square with the RAF buck passing and having meetings to justify salaries.
Like most OCs I could be getting cadets to local non RAF flying establishments with ease and have lots of chatty, smiling cadets at the end of the day.
If you want copies of internal data you will have to use the FOIA process, just as you would with any subject. Nobody has the right to publicly release data outside of this process.
Using FOIA is a waste of public resource. I’m pretty sure you could send it to my @rafac.mod.gov.uk address perfectly fine, or all RAvOs in fact.
Publishing the wastage stats within the RAFAC would help visibility and help people understand where they are contributing to waste. It could also be rather embarrassing for one or both sides of course. I won’t know until I see it.
They absolutely do… FOI should be the ‘last resort’. If it can be released under FOI, it can be released normally.
edit: I should also add that submitting an FOI can be as simple as emailing and asking for what you want. You don’t even need to mention the FOIA. There is a ‘formal process’ if you do, but any request for information should be treated equally.
Also, you are talking in a way which speaks of already knowing the numbers, so why can’t you just give some detail/proof? There are other users on here in ‘senior’ positions that happily use their name so there is credit to what they are saying. Currently you could be just anyone making up numbers?
It is interesting to often read on here and in this thread that ‘cadets won’t spend a day to get a 20 min AEF trip’ and ‘staff won’t spend a day at an airfield for cadets to get an AEF trip’
What is it that cadets would expect on an AEF day then?
What is it that adult staff would expect on a day at an AEF then?
