Cadet BGA gliding

Everyone Flying
101

Sir,

I took flying and gliding out of recruitment literature and presentations for cadets and parents - I couldn’t in all honestly, and with any INTEGRITY, promote those as RAFAC activities - this is because as a Squadron Commander I now have cadets aging out after 5/6 years who have NEVER been in AEF or VGS aircraft. They may have had a 20minute flight in a chinook or something similar, but actual time behind the controls, none.

I assume you have access to the Commanders’ Dashboard - if not please look into it, that has the ability to tell you exactly how many minutes of flying and gliding have been completed. I think you will be shocked. Compare that to the number of days shooting, adventure training, fieldcraft and you will see its a tiny percentage of our offer to cadets, which is a shame. I was lucky enough to complete gliding scholarship and flying scholarships as a cadets, but back then most cadets on a squadron had Blue (non-solo) GS wings at age 16, and a large percentage had Silver (solo) wings. Now as a staff member I am genuinely intrigued when I see a cadet gain either. It’s a sad state of affairs, but at the coal face, RAFAC does not do Flying and Gliding anymore. It’s a specialist activity for ‘the few’.

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102

I’m not sure which thread is best to place this on, but I’m very happy to take up @Cab’s kind offer of a visit / job shadow for the day. His PSO already has my contact details I think.

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Not sure how if I’ve attached it right but now we are definitely being trolled!

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104

Well, they’re not lying… Embarrassing again for us!

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105

Not sure that the “all have waiting lists” big is true.

The rest however is spot on.

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106

What they’re not saying is that many scout troops have waiting lists too, both SA and BP…

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Clint is a mate of mine. I’ve heard there are more children on waiting lists for scouts than currently involved in scouting; however, if you get them in young as beavers or cubs, they jump to the top of waiting lists and can even start to transition up to six months early (attending both cubs and scouts, etc.)

Unlike the SCC, we don’t have an internal recruiting stream like that.

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108

And the reason they introduced Squirrels was in part because Girl Guiding started younger than Scouts!

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109

Ive heard this too…im sure it was a headline to a newspaper article

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Currently 100,000 on waiting lists l, which doesn’t come close to their numbers nationally.

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111

We have no waiting list and if we get newbies then we ask if they have any friends that will want to join with them. Filling out the forms on their first night and give it a couple of weeks before we add them to make sure they kind of like it and turn up.

When we are asked about flying and gliding by the parents, I tell them it’s a possibility and if they aren’t interested in flying then they don’t have to stress as we don’t force them to do anything. We then give them a tour of the building and the NCOs give them a brief of what to expect on the first 6 months on sqn.

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Maybe I had it wrong — it’s more on their waiting lists than involved in our organisation.

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The sooner we all acknowledge that the RAF can no longer provide for the air cadets, the better. The budget simply doesn’t allow for it anymore.

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114

So posting here instead as it’s more appropriate for the discussion.

I’ve been thinking about this & extrapolating a bit (I.e. educated guessing) I think I can understand the rationale which is a little further than cadet world over-cautiousness.

So for this though experiment let us assume that the RAF endorses a private club as safe for use for cadet gliding/fluing/parachuting.

Clubs are private organisations with a semi-commercial arm bit like a community interest company for its members.

Can of worms number 1

Now if the RAF endorses a club as “inspected & safe for cadet use” then that club would then use it as a marketing aspect to increase membership & possibly annual subs as the club is RAF approved.

If the RAF, as a public/crown body, gives endorsement to one particular enterprise then it then has to endorse (or go through) the majority of clubs as otherwise the unendorsed club cry foul and sue the RAF for not even going through the process.

Can of Worms number 2

So the RAF has inspected & endorsed a club as “safe”. That club then has a fatality with a non-cadet. Club looking at a hefty HSE inspection & legal action by relatives try to pass the buck to the RAF who have deeper pockets to fight any legal action. The RAF is embroiled in a legal row which it had no involvement in but it is forced to fight the action probably because it has to prove that it’s safe system wasn’t followed either by the club or the fatality. Media will also have a field day.

Can of Worms number 3

Privatisation of military assets. So privatisation has been creeping more & more into area that exclusively use to be government prerogatives.

Search & Rescue is a good example, along with flying training plus other non-military aspects such as prisons or Government Pipeline & Storage System

Should gliding, flying & parachute training be outsourced for cadets (the most vulnerable group in the military) then there would be a push to privatise these aspects making our armed forces dependent on private companies for operations even more than they currently are (& avoid the problem of strike action by the civilians)

When G4S dropped out of the olympics the military had to pick up the slack something they would never want to do with areas that are operational such as flying training, particularly with the likely sausage grinder transactional nature that comes with the private/commercial sector.

So looking at this even if the safety case can be made for cadets using civilian gliding/flying/parachute clubs, I would argue that the wider business case & legal case do not.

Is there a way round this?

There maybe a way round can of worms 1 &2.

What would need to happen is that the national governing bodies would need to introduce & enforce a rating & grading system that can is independent of but accepted by the RAF.

Think similar to the food hygiene star systems that council use for food outlets. You would then dictate in policy that only 5star approved clubs would be permitted to be used by cadets.

Is there a precedent for this?

Kinda - all (civilian & military) rifle ranges use to be inspected by the MoD until about 15-20 years ago where the MoD said they would only do those ranges used by military units. Approval for civilian ranges was kinda transferred to the NGBs of the NRA & NSRA but I don’t know how effective that would be.

Regardless this still leaves can of worms number 3 & that will be tied up in politics and will not be able to even be touched until after the next election.

So in summary, even if the safety case can be made, I don’t believe that looking at the wider picture that the proposal makes good business sense nor legal sense.

115

Thy were all outsourced to Tayside Aviation until that collapsed into administration.

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Thought they only did the flying scholarships?

One of the reasons for Scotland is that the safeguarding legal requirement are less for post 16s than in England & wales.

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I’m not familiar with the details around using civilian gliding schools but we used to have a policy that allowed us to do it so it’s clearly possible. It seems unlikely that the policy would’ve been endorsed without consideration of those aspects.

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The UK Military Flying Training System has already been outsourced to Ascent, so that precedent is already set and cadets flying privately presents no risk to flying training being privatised: it already is.

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119

In which case Ascent might claim that cadets using other non-military flying organisations would compromise an exclusivity clause in their contract & that any civilian gliding or flying training must be offered to them first.

Out of curiosity does the timeline on the removal of non-service aircraft flying for cadets coincide with that contract?

Ascent don’t have a good reputation for effectiveness anyway - just for milking the system & delivering little.

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120

Good points that sound just like the reasons given for the lack of sandwich vans, etc, visiting stations and why we can’t have barbecues on them.

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