Forgie me, but everything i’ve read doesn’t indicate that flying or gliding is stopping. Changing yes. Stopping no. If you look back 30, 40, 50 or 60 years, gliding and flying were vastly different then. Why should today be any different.
If the RAF have issued drone pilot wings, because that’s the way air warfare is going, are we not laggin gbehind by not doing something similar? I wait with baited breath for the drone pilot residential training course c/w issued wings at the end. You would be surprised at how many cadets would sign up for that.
Not long-term, certainly. However, short-term, it has, yes. Long-term, the issues relating to long-distance travel to a VGS location + overnight accommodation have yet to be encountered/managed. Duty availability for VGS instructors who drive a long way to their “new” VGS? Hmmm, wonder if that has been factored in…?
Where is the current back-up plan to get cadets gliding? Resounding silence; there isn’t one. Ah, but they issued numerous gliding scholarships last year to be flown at RAFGSA sites. Yes, but as there were DBS issues, the diktat was that all cadets under 18 would have to be accompanied by a adult - for XX consecutive weekends. Yeah, that worked so well - tied in with the considerable distance required to travel to the RAGDSA site allocated by each region. Effectively, that forced the selection to those who lived nearby or those over 18 with their own car. So, more deserving cadets could not participate.
The Membury planning application still has not gone through (query from Highways as far as I can see) = no building new hangars = no repairs (& probably no technicians who will want to take a punt on when things will start). Timeline moves even more to the right.
Where is the 2016 plan? What about using BGA facilities? For goodness sake, will someone on high show some mettle & get cadets gliding.
Fair point about gliding, but AEF hasn’t stopped and by all accounts gliding WILL continue. We live in hope. As for the problems you identify, well they will have some time to work on that won’t they.
I wonder how many commissioned officers have signed the petition?
Could being a commissioned officer signing the petition be a bit naughty? Going against the chain of command, and disrepute and all that. As officers don’t we have to tow the party line.
I thought that too. That’s why I haven’t written to my MP yet.
However, sometimes, things are worth doing regardless of the personal sacrifice. If I get binned for signing a petition trying to safeguard the future of the organisation I’m not sure I want to be in the organisation anyway.
Weigh up what difference will it make. Your MP can, and may, raise it as a question in the HoC but the inevitable answer will be, “flying continues and gliding is on a path to recovery with a new operating model”. Question answered. No select committee asking pointy questions. No reverse of path. Instead you get shafted and the cadets loose out more than they did the day before you wrote the letter.
Just crack on and enjoy what we do. It’s a hobby remember.
Yes we are volunteers Plt_Off_Prune, and the main reason we volunteer is to help young cadets grow into suitable disciplined adults. And gliding/flying has massive input to achieve that goal. Am I wrong?
This is the exact reason why I have emailed my local MP to get these questions answered. Proof is shown by the vast majority of this petition that people want good for our young people. Yes I may sound like gliding/flying is main part but I know there are many other activities that Instill discipline. But like people say, people join cadets to get the opportunity to fly?! Why should this be limited to the point that a cadet may not even be able to fly? Yes because of money, so what?
I’d counter that by suggesting a vast proportion of people have signed it because they don’t know the future plans. They think by reading the shared articles that flying and gliding is stopping. The Facebook group “you know you’ve been an air cadet too long” has a few posts linking to the petition and they suggest this. There’s 15,000 people on there mainly cadets I’d suggest. Not hard to whip up some panic.
OK first post, the people in my area have signed because they know it is highly unlikely for ANY cadets in the area will ever get gliding again , none will progress to FSC or VGS staff .
I did a few sums yesterday and to get all cadets from NI ,10 at a time for the proposed twice a year will cost in the region of £90,000 annually just to get them there.
Until the proposed AEF is set up ,and I have heard a few possible timelines for that at anything between 18 months and four years, getting them over to Woodvale once a year ,with no guaranteed flying, due to various reasons mainly weather on arrival at Liverpool, on my Sqns AEF trips no cadet has flown on one in around four years, costs will be around £50,000 per year . But then again our AEF trips have been cut from 24 cadets at a time to six , still needing 2 staff so I can get maybe half my cadets over for a Liverpool shopping trip a year !
Trying hard to justify just why cadets should stay with the ATC now, at least the local sea cadets have a boat !
On the day of the “pause” I had one cadet on his first flight on his GS, another had just completed his Blue Wings and a third was half way through his G2 , thankfully two of them have been awarded FS but they are the last cadets on my Sqn to fly in anything apart from one getting a Hawk flight at Valley camp , on Easter camp coming up for the Wg 50 going and 15 AEF slots available !
Future plans - well now there is an oxymoron if ever I’ve heard one, when used in the context of the ACMB, 2FTS and 22 Group.
All the while this has been going on (since April 2014) we have not been told anything (other than unmitigated nonsense on a par with Mr Lear) until their hands have been forced. Even then there isn’t a plan to get cadets gliding in the interim, because it would mean having to engage in some ‘blue sky thinking’ and this is not something they could ever be associated with … thinking.
It’s not whipping up any panic or anything like that how you can whip up a panic after 2 years is a debatable point, it’s people showing a real concern about the future of our unique selling point and if the petition reaches 100000 then it can be debated in The House and the 3 groups I mention need to come under extreme scrutiny. If only on this matter, because they failed spectacularly to get the gliders airborne (and you’d like to think they would have or call on some expertise on getting aircraft airborne) in 2 years and then a couple months before the second anniversary of the grounding any forward movement becomes subject to something that didn’t exist in much of the previous two years, ie the basing review, which they can use to deflect criticism of their competence and allow them to collect salaries.
As for writing to MPs as I said look through the letters in real newspapers and there are officers and some ORs writing in to criticise what the govt and MOD are doing and I’m sure they will speak to MPs and so on. As PEP says if they say your binned because of it, so what. It would demonstrate just how poor they are. This is one thing that the whole of the ACO should galvanised on because it affects the very uniqueness of the Corps in terms of activities.
the more people that stand up for the corps, the more you will get out of the system.
if every commissioned officer, SNCO that agrees with me about standing up for what is right then we would all get binned? and Im sure the ATC sacrifice all those volunteers for writing to an MP?
on the other hand, answer this, if a CADET wrote to an MP and it got out to the public domain will that CADET get binned? surely not, so why would it be the same as staff?
I don’t feel you will get more out of the system per se, but it shows how much people resent the way they have been treated.
Why do people go on strike?
Why do people do protest marches?
At the heart of it it’s how they feel they have been treated and feel no other course is open to them, as it highly visible and gets in the news. I don’t know one other member of squadron staff in the Corps I’ve spoken over the last 2 years who thinks we been treated well, the polar opposite in fact. Why people who run the Corps can sit there messing around at playing at being in the RAF and not expect to be held to account, when they would hold us to account and get bent out of shape for not complying with their box ticking rules, is laughable.
Maybe we uniformed staff should only do 12 hours a month as per our ‘contract’ and CIs act how they feel wish to. Even if you boiled it down to just parade times, without the extra 30-60 minutes for opening and closing. Most, based on 8 parades a month, would get at least one week off and no weekends. Imagine how would the Corps operate without the weekends for activities? We wouldn’t need any VR(T) Wing staff. If you did one weekend that’s it for two months. OK it’s a drastic step and idea and not one, one member of the volunteer staff would take as people care too much, but the Corps would look a lot different instantly and justifying OTT salaried positions would become extremely difficult and it wouldn’t be a bolt hole for RAF people not quite ready for the real world.
I’m an Officer, and an OC. I have signed the petition, not because I believe things will change, but because I hope that it will force certain elements of our leadership to rethink how any further situations like this are handled.
I understand why the decision to ground the fleet was made. I get that the pot of money available to sort out the issues is forever shrinking, and that getting a fleet up in the air again is more expensive than maintaining the status quo. I even sort of understand why the ACO would be reluctant to plow money into Gliding Schools, which may then have the land sold off from underneath them.
I don’t understand why there were no alternative plans put forwards to mitigate the effects on the cadets. I don’t understand why the schools have been treated so badly by those that they trusted to get them flying again. Nor do I understand why, when this decision must have been know about before it’s release last week, the squadrons who are most likely to be badly affected by the changes have had no reassurance that Gliding will continue to be a viable activity to offer their cadets.
My squadron is relatively luck. Our nearest VGS is less than an hour away. The second nearest is just over an hour ago. I did spend a good few years on a squadron in Mid Wales, however. An AEF trip for them meant a 4am departure. GIC’s were 2 hours away, if the traffic was good. Goodness know how they will manage to get any cadets Gliding from now on.
I don’t think that Gliding and Flying in the ATC is over, but for a good proportion of the Corps, it just got a lot more difficult to get cadets in the air. I hope this petition shows that we as a Corps are standing together. I hope it shows the squadrons badly affected that we support them, even if their leadership doesn’t. And I hope it shows that the mistreatment of the Volunteer Gliding Schools - for whom we all have a lot to thank them for - has not gone unnoticed.
Will lessons be learned? Time will tell. But if this petition forces our leadership to reassess how they manage issues like this in the future, then it was well worth the 30 seconds or so it took to sign.
Well, after over 40 years in the Corps (I joined the Air Training Corps) man & boy I have seen lots and lots of change. I can’t say that the ACO in all that time has evolved but it has changed! But the one thing that distinguished the ATC from all other Cadet Forces was flying! For over two years now gliding (the purest form of flying) has been lost to the Corps and whilst we all can appreciate that safety was the paramount reason for that ‘stop’ why does it take so long to a. tell us why, and b. someone else to tell us the outcome?
If the hierarchy in the ACO is now more RAF than it ever was it beggars belief how the RAF has any flying capability left.
Yes, I am VRT and have been for over 30 years (CFM & 3 Bars), do I love the Corps… HELL YES! Do I criticize the Corps, HELL YES! An organisation need to be questioned to improve, and although the ACO is different than it was when I joined it back in 1974 I don’t think it is any better than it was back then (the inclusion of girls in the Corps is a huge exception to that statement). Yes, the parent organisation has shrunk below the numbers of the ACO which would have been unheard of back in the 70’s but there we are. But to lose some of the ‘Air’ in Air Training Corps (OK, we will call ourselves Air Cadets) us unfathomable.
For those that are old enough to remember the ITV series ‘Get Some In’, about National Service recruits in the late 50’s early 60’s (Google it)! It was so like my early ATC cadet life (ann many others I know) that it was almost an ACP on Summer Camp experiences (remember Cpl. Marsh)? But the theme song now runs true for the ACO… " Though you’re in the RAF (ACO) you’ll never see a plane"!
Rant over…
And no, I’m not an ‘old fart’ what you have to remember is that the ATC has run for many years on the ‘Esprit de Corps’ of many volunteers. It doesn’t matter what the hierarchy say at HQAC they do not value that commitment any more. To suggest that we move around and be posted elsewhere within the organisation (a la the regular service) shows a total lack of understanding and empathy with the CFAV. Lord help us all!
I will retire soon, I’m only hanging on for the pension
It might be difficult for some to get their head around the notion that people who criticise something, still like, enjoy and enthuse about it.
I am of a similar era to Comms_Uk and identify with what is said.
The problem with questioning this organisation is that the RAF types running it aren’t used to be being criticised or questioned on their actions. We have company days and the Board turn up in full armour as they know they will get questioned and passing them off, doesn’t go down well. The nearest we have is Convention and a couple of Wg Cdrs have said anyone criticising or questioning isn’t particularly welcomed.
In one of those conventions a previous Wg Cdr asked this question. With the planned reduction in Wing HQs from 36 to 30 couldn’t we also reduce the number of regions from 6 to 5?
It went down like a lead balloon and wasn’t invited to ask another question all day.
