I’m having the same debate. Not quite as far for me, but nothing will make me want to sit around an empty RAF station for 10 hours in the vague hope of getting 1/8th of my cadets airborne, whilst giving sycophants and people that get off on collecting salutes turn up for the first time in months.
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Maybe there should be a whiff of rebellion in the air and all the Squadron based staff tell everyone from above squadron level, we’re all busy that weekend, you’ll have to staff it all instead. In your own time carry on!!
See how quick their attitudes change as now CFAVs can’t actually be instructed to volunteer, another result of the CFC.
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I bet a lot of units are busy, if we’re only learning about it now.
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Ahhhhh RAFAC communications…not very good is it, too many people trying to preserve empires by holding information until the last moment then demanding action.
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Love your optimism. We have 0/10 fly last time
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I’ve given a technical view of the last one here.
I hate to see cadets not fly, but it’s genuinely a massive effort to get AC in the air for that long.
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Plus on top of all of that, I’m pretty sure an aircraft went US from a bird-strike half way through the day last time too. Which obviously doesn’t help!
I’ve cleaned a few bird strikes…
Absolutely disgusting. And a genuine huge amount of paperwork and penalty maintenance to ensure it’s fit to fly.
Absolutely no way you’re getting cadets in there.
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And so speaks the voice of experience, something the RAFAC don’t recognise.
On another note hope the back is good.
Which is precisely the issue.
These things will have been planned for months given the logistics that go in to it.
Why don’t they scale down the plans and make it more achievable? There is no way they will fly close to 2000 cadets on the day, let alone over it.
Aim for 1k and then make that happen. Stop promising the earth and delivering a pittance. Let us think the organisation is competent and put on a well run, well managed and well admined event. Learn from the 3 or 4 that have happened before and stop making the same mistakes.
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Is that not Einstein’s comment, a definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
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I honestly don’t know.
I don’t know who is making the calls or what resources they’re pulling it with.
We’ve had one line for the past two weeks and with our manning levels it’s been tight making it. Fortunately our management and aircrew are pretty decent about it. They don’t expect the impossible, because that’s what getting a second line will be.
The people making these calls I genuinely believe have the best of intentions, but they are either stupidly ignoring or have been given incorrect projections.
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The thing is, they did a Muster when I was a cadet at, I think, Benson (might have been somewhere else, can’t remember) where they did fly something like 2k cadets. Split across Chinooks and Pumas.
Pretty awesome day out. Everyone who went flew. There was also not much standing around doing nothing. It was pretty well structured. This would have been maybe 2012/2013 ish. Can’t recall exactly.
Might well have been able to then…
2012 was a huge redundancy period for the services. And since then I’ve noticed it get slimmer and slimmer for workforce levels…
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So, one, a decade ago, with equipment that’s not now a decade older / a decade closer to out of service, organised by people who are no longer in their posts, and followed by several musters that have been utter tripe.
One swallow does not a summer make.
It’s simply not good enough.
If we were invited, we wouldn’t be going. I wouldn’t be advertising this to my cadets.
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My point being is that these things can work, and have worked in the past. The problem seems to be the complete omnishambles of our organisation, and our parent organisation to boot.
I wouldn’t actually mind a massive 2k cadet event knowing that only 500 would fly. So long as: 1-It was made clear form the start that only 500 would fly. 2-It was a good engaging day with lots of other good interesting things for cadets to do. 3-Be planned properly and 4-Not turn into a clusterF on the day!
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I would love an event like this to work, but sadly I have so little trust in the ability of this organisation to actually deliver. . .
I’ve replied to both emails (no reply-all, sorry) asking who the PoC is . . .
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Well I had a reply, RC C&E is in charge with Senior Staff Officer C&E leading the event. They didn’t know which Regions were being allocated cadet places. 
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So they want staff to assist from anywhere but don’t know who’s going yet?!
Amazing. Truly special.
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Something like that . . .
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