Not even close to substantial flak but thanks for the recognition that some folk offer their opinions in a way which is not respectful.
I sleep easy as I am doing my utmost to secure the right resources and outcomes for the Air Cadets. I have had a useful intro meeting with the new Cmdt and I assure you everything is up for challenge and change as long as the resources are available and our output is demonstrably safe (ALARP and Tolerable).
We will fly approx 11500 cadets this FY and you will have seen how I am trying to increase this number. Civ means is not the answer. I want RAF Air Cadets to fly from RAF locations and / or in RAF aircraft and / or with RAF pilots. I absolutely understand how this isn’t a view shared by some and I respect that. But the link to the RAF is important and I will sustain it as much as possible. Sustainment of Tutor and Viking is central to the AEF offer. Be careful of considering alternatives eg removing both types in favour of funding flying at civ locations. This is not a future I want nor do I think it is a better future for RAFAC.
I get why RAF does not want to blanket authorise flights at any flying school/ ato / dto. Just because they are regulated doesn’t mean they are compliant. You look at some with fleets of utter ****box Cessnas with limited to day VFR only, and you wonder how they fly! As a professional pilot I can make an informed decision as to what/when I fly (as can any license holder), but cadets / parents / your average squadron staff can’t.
This is why I liked the acto35 process - it authorised pilot and aircraft together on a case-by-case basis. It also set minimum for experience (possibly for aircraft too, I can’t remember!)
@Cab are we able to consider headcount at 6FTS to do any of:
Approvals under a re-vamped acto35 process?
Pilot check outs (at pilots expense) in their aircraft?
Aircraft engineering inspections?
You could also limit flights to airfields with full ATC only to further reduce risk?
Yes, it won’t benefit majority of cadets, but where you have CFAVs with the right licence / aircraft it can make awesome stuff happen.
I think most of us would disagree; it has to be - at least in part. Civilian means has to be part of an overall solution which has an outcome of every cadet getting an opportunity to fly once a year; anything less is failing to deliver our USP. There is no way you are trebling your flying output to ensure every cadet gets one flight per year unless someone appears with a magic money tree and decides to build a load of more local RAF bases. Any work done to increase the RAF provided aspect is obviously appreciated and everyone would agree that link should be paramount - but not at the expense of getting kids in the air.
Yet there is evidence of our ACF cousins making the most of these civilian club opportunities - given the “JS” in JSP stands for “joint service” i have always believed this is a policy which all forces (Navy, Army, Air Force) all comply with?
i don’t think we’re questioning the what is being provided, or arguing its safety or accordance with expectations (regs and policy).
what we are arguing is the capacity has fallen off a cliff with no sign that former capacity will recover - constantly “jam tomorrow”
so do we [CFAVs] but the capacity doesn’t allow for anything close to a sensible expectation - even if there are 11500 this FY, that is only ~20-25% of the Cadet population - and that is not an equally distributed 25% either nationally or across the board (ie 25% of the population ≠ 25% of every Wing or 25% every Squadron)
It was only 10 years ago when considering the VGS fleet the policy which indicated Cadets should expect one flight a year (ACTO 11(Ver9.0) - Annex A) was influential in what the future VGS fleet might look like.
10 years on we cannot manage 1 flight every other year today given the average length of service of a Cadet is ~2 years, the vast majority join the world’s most prestigious flying club’s (ie RAF) sponsored youth organization (RAFAC) and and less than 25% chance of getting a flight
If you lose from the RAF side you will never get it back & then the civvy side will rinse you.
May also be worth checking if Ascent have an exclusivity clause before pushing for civilian providers (think of it like MT & clarity/Phoenix & the faff that causes when we could just go direct to the local enterprise down the road)
Herein lies the issue, really. We used to fly routinely double that in Tutor alone - IIRC, not much more than 10 years ago? - plus many more for gliding. Not sure if that figure includes gliding but I suspect it might.
The actual flying and gliding available is still excellent - world class. ACPS, too. There just isn’t enough of it to support a RAFAC of this size.
And that’s a reality we need to recognise whilst doing all we can (all I can) to expand the flying offer and the wider offer available within RAFAC. Flying is important but so is everything else that we do and the offer is increasingly rich outside of the cockpit. I cannot invest in mil and civ aviation concurrently so I am focussed on enriching the mil experience. I understand this might frustrate some but it is what I judge to be the best overall outcome for our amazing Cadets.
Then we need to stop selling ourselves as though cadets go flying every weekend, as in lots of adverts. Realistically a cadet is lucky if they go flying once in any given year. Fundamentally that is unacceptable given flying is supposedly out main USP.
The landing page on the RAF website for us says “Cadets have many opportunities including UK and overseas camps, leadership courses, air experience flights and pilot training.” Let’s be realistic. UK camps are few and far between, overseas are now all self funded and almost non-existent. Basic leadership stuff is in full swing, but the top end stuff is all canx. The flying speaks for it’s self.
We have circa 45k cadets. The vast majority are not seeing those opportunities.
How you you advise your staff edit their recruitment packs to better communicate the nuance of your flying offer, to ensure there’s no over promising that could lead to a generation of cadets being disgruntled by the RAF promising an amazing flying syllabus and then not delivering it for many of them?
If this is the reality, future recruits deserve to understand that nuance before they go through all the joining and training.
Edit:
As JB says above. The advertised offer needs to change. You shouldn’t be showing loads of cadets flying and you should highlight that recruits should expect one flight every two years.
The matching of task to resources is always a difficult balancing act. We are not privy to the current budgetary pressures, or those that will inevitably fall out of the current defence review (and neither should we be). What is useful is an understanding of the resource available to the RAFAC and how that will be allocated. In that @Cab is in my view sharing as much as he can with us.
The reality for Tutor flying is that it is limited and is likely to remain at a similar level into the future. If the priority is to fly cadets more often then there is a straight forward solution - reduce the number of cadets. However, that would deprive many young people of the opportunity to benefit from the full range on offer. Yes the promotion material needs to be rebalanced, yes the offering isn’t what it was, but the impact it continues to make on so many lives should not be underestimated.
In my old stomping ground, the sad reality is that some cadets are lucky to go once in their entire cadet career. Especially if they have any kind of very minor medical or mental health condition requiring a doctor’s sign-off.
It’s a lot easier now after the changes a couple months ago. We’ve managed to get them signed off a lot quicker, and the letter to the GPs is a lot clearer
I think if we are realistic or even reasonable which in this organisation to some is a struggle, if the RAF said to a mainstream newspaper “we are unable to provide flying to the RAF Air cadets” due to funding cuts and commitments of those aircraft being used for initial Pilot training for Ukraine pilots. Probably 3/4 of the readers that it reached would be who are the RAF Air cadets and why are “we” (the taxpayer) funding them the other 1/4 will be a mixture of unlucky for them etc.
Is a key activity for the RAF Air cadets, flying… Of course, is there less flying now than 20 years ago… Yes, could the general public actually care… no, if anything the reaction would probably be questioning how much is funded.
The scope of using private gliding/flying clubs would be nice, especially if you are close by, just out of interest I looked up a local flying club which offers 60 mins lessons in a Cessna 152 with the cost being £250 for their “trial air experience flight” - So a standard AEF allocation you are talking £750-1000 a time for going private. Realistically how many Squadrons could afford to do that. Unless you guaranteed 1 flight per year and increased subs by £20 a month to cover it. Gliding is cheaper but still costly around £140 per person.
So if this was allowed, with the private option you could increase subs by £32.50 per month to guarantee 1 flying and 1 gliding slot a year/find the funding shortfall or manage AEF/VGS as best as you can within the restraints we have. It would be also interesting to know if parents would be willing to increase subs too, in the most part to between £40- £50 per month but knowing a yearly gliding and flying slot would be guaranteed.
That is 100% accurate but it needs to expand to include access to aviation-focused synthetic training, drone training, top quality / nationally recognised education’.
Drone training that still hasn’t launched despite the policy having been published.
Which has been re-profiled/in review for the past year as we finally recognised that our training offering was pretty out of date and decidedly not top quality.
I think parents could just take their offspring to the local flying / gliding club and pay the £200. That would save them a few hundred pounds per year against paying £40-£50 per month and without the faff of involving the RAFAC. Not many could afford it, and those that can probably already do.
