To be honest, I’d be thankful that we’ve got what we’ve got - certainly with the AEF, but also with the VGS system. It’d be very easy to turn it off at some stage, and with MFTS on the horizon, that is a distinct possibility for the University Air Sqns, and therefore also the AEFs unless a major restructuring takes place.
I’ve shared my thoughts before on the mass “contracting” of AEF flying to local flying organisations - nice in principle, but difficult to manage from a service duty of care point of view. CFS Exam Wg used to around to all the RAF FS providers to standardise when the old system was in place. I doubt that would be possible to police effectively if a similar civilianisation of AEFing took place.
Hi there - I’m interested (as an ex-parent and current civilian committee member) in the mechanics of getting the cadets into gliders. There seems to be an implication here that 20% only of the cadets could possibly fly in any one year if everything works perfectly - that seems to me a very small proportion. However, a couple of years ago I was led to understand that a cadet could expect to be offered (barring weather/mechanical failure etc) 3 glider flights per 12 months, last year it was, I’m told, down to one. Is there any guidance as to how much flying an Air Cadet could expect from the organisation a year? (I’m not going to hold anyone to ransom over the answer, just looking for what could be termed ‘current expectations’ and excluding ‘acts of God’. If it exists anywhere online - I’d be grateful for a pointer, I can’t find anything on the main website.
The stats from last year indicate 10860 GICs completed (3-5 flights or 20-30mins) 882 Gliding Scholarships (40-55 Lchs or 9-10hrs) 95 AGT (25lchs or 5hrs) 93 Grade 2 and Grade 1. For this you could have cadets at all levels and also into the instructor courses.
This output for 2013 needs to take into consideration that not all Squadrons are currently operating at their full capacity as it is. Most are down on their aircraft establishment as they await serviced aircraft to be released, then there are shortages of ground equipment, airfield availability etc. if the 25 VGS were all operating at full capacity these numbers would be greatly increased, some over perform some under perform as it is sort all the background problems then most would over perform and nearly all would achieve their targets no doubt.
On Topic -
The main reason now as to why the vigilants at least are still ground is there is no audit trail to say that they are serviceable. Many paper work issues have arisen from the change from 3FTS to 2FTS, but once all of these issues have been sorted air cadet gliding should improve from what it was while under 3FTS.
Hi Tingger, thanks for that info, it was useful and I need obviously need to understand more in order to fully understand your considered reply. I’m not sure how to convert this into cadet expectations or rather targets for 2014. I’ll keep reading here and maybe get more understanding of what’s going on.
Those documents what has (or has not!) been done to the airframe, or engine, but not the reasons behind the decisions.
There is much more to an airworthiness document set that an individual aircrafts records.
I suspect a new Duty holder taking over an aircraft type would go through everything with a fine tooth comb, and since they personally are taking responsibility for the airworthiness of a fleet, if there are discrepancies it should not be surprising if they say no, wait a minute, where is this that or the other?
This has been a problem across the services, as witnessed in the outcome of the Haddon-Cave report into the Nimrod crash, and the subequent formation of the Military Airworthiness Authority etc.
Sad but true, sometimes we are not as good at these things as we would like to think.
I would hope we will get an explanation as to the actual issues, and sooner rather than later as we need to maintain our own faith in the organisation, if only so we can confidently tell our cadets and parents that we remain the safest provider of avaiation opportunity in the world.
…As a consequence of this engineering activity, and to assist in you future planning, please assume it is unlikely that any cadet gliding will take place before 1 Jun 14.
… wish you all a happy Bank Holiday weekend John Middleton Gp Capt OC2FTS
As far as I know, the documentary issues go back several years and the RAF were doing the maintenance on our gliders then! Could be that the dreaded contractors actually found the anomalies?