Does anyone have any actual gen on how today went? Looked pretty good from the outside!
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Waiting to hear back from 2 cadets we’ve had down there. Will update once they’ve posted via Facebook.
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Parents are posting on Facebook in their droves and they are unhappy.
All the SM I’ve seen points to this.
But hey ho, fake news and all that.
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Any particular reason?
What level? Sqn , wing or national?
From stuff on social media it appears the messaging of flying in a chinook was taken as gospel for all…not a set %/as many as poss
Main RAFAC page.
Just had a look through. There’s a couple of negative comments, but 99% are positive.
Not on the post I was looking at, but there are a few with comments.
Ok, I’ll caveat this by saying that I attended the previous cluster with a large group, none of whom flew.
This time round my wing was allocated 35 places. Of the 35 cadets, 13 flew, as they opted to have first time flyers as priority.
The admin staff were sweating spinal fluid trying to organise the day. I personally witnessed a CFAV reduce one of the admin staff to tears with their behaviour - utterly pathetic, a point I made to said CFAV.
Flying wise, the 13 kids all flew, big thumbs up from then. One stick did spend a big chunk of the day in the hangar.
Fly pasts - cool, some parts of the Kings Flypast flew over inc the F35s, Lancaster did multiple passes. Puma flypast for final parade (all sitting)
AM Maddison gave an excellent speech, parade was proportional and appropriate, and the puma flypast was nice.
The food situation seemed to be busy but organised, all my cadets got food and horror bag for way home. No food for staff but we knew this a little bit beforehand.
Departure and arrival was alright, bit of faff, but generally decent.
Rest of event; the RAF staff everywhere I looked were engaging with the cadets and seemed generally happy to be there and sharing their jobs. Some fun bits for the cadets from RAFAC too, if was being picky I’d say displays could have been better, the inspirational cadets stand had some top cadets, with great stories, but it wasn’t obvious that was what they were - which was sad.
Plenty of water and toilets.
Timings worked well.
Bad points: originally due to be 3 air frames, but only 2 could fly in the end. Legit operational reason why. This meant that not as many cadets flew. They did fly 900+ however which was the most flown at a Benson muster before. A third airframe would have helped!
Admin team made the mistake of telling the arriving staff that first time flyers would be the only ones to fly. Net result was some immediate dishonesty (you could hear this being discussed in the queue). One staff member tried to claim his whole squadron were first timers, but quickly changed story when it was suggested they’d check SMS. Unfortunately this undermined the integrity of what they were doing.
Some CFAV were acting like children, and there was multiple instances of abusive behaviour and attitudes which shouldn’t have been tolerated. It needed gripping by someone with accompanying threat of removal from the base.
Some CFAV organising the flying sticks were quite obviously rounding up their own cadets and fast tracking them, while pre-assigned sticks waited in the shade - poor show. This was very evident, I watched one guy outright tell a group stood near me that “he will come get them and get them to the front of the queue”.
All in all, much better than the last. Some may disagree based on their own experience, and they are no more or less right than me.
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To be fair about 2/3 of those comments are the same mum complaining.
3 HOURS WAIT!
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Corrected that for you?
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But it means id have to actually listen to the Girlfriend
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You really are treading dangerous ground, do you sleep with one eye open. Do as I do claim deafness, works for me and worked for my dad.
My opinion of the day is summed up by the media team deleting negative comments on social media.
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It’s a shame and unsurprising that not all cadets flew! However, I can’t fault the effort, hard work and dedication that us CFAVs and RAF Staff put in, I do hope that will recognised by the perm staff
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My cadets that went had a fantastic time, a highlight of their cadet careers. We did expectation management saying they weren’t guaranteed to fly. I think the entitled comments on social media are a real shame as no one HAD to organise the event
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