It seems that there’s been an incident with a Tutor at Wittering. Filtered through Facebook as seems customary now.
With the time of week it is, I’m thinking it’s more likely to have involved UAS students rather than cadets.
Turns out it was just the pilot. Still an impressive feat.
RAF Wittering post suggesting that it was a solo pilot, with a picture suggesting they conducted a forced landing into a field.
No injuries, most importantly.
Obviously just stopped to see the cows. Don’t know why such a big deal is being made.
Wasn’t sure if they were really small, or just far away…
Then he went to see his lovely horse…
Solo, member of staff, dodgy engine, had to stick it in a field. No-one else involved, just mechanical issue.
One Wing has emailed to say they are grounded. Waiting to hear from my Wing.
Grounded pending investigation. I’ll say more when the investigation is over, but from the sounds of it they’ll be back flying v soon.
That’s what they said about the gliders… 
So who forgot to wind up the elastic band enough?
Looks like a great bit of flying, but will mean the fleet is grounded. But for how long?
As long as it takes to identify the problem and then potentially isolate it to one or a number of airframes/engines that need checking.
Given that I’m supposedly taking cadets next weekend I’m wondering at what stage I’ll be told about a grounding, or whether I’ll end up arriving at the AEF before I hear anything officially…
We have flying next week and our AEF have told us to assume it’s going ahead despite the incident and they’ll let us know if anything changes.
CCF got an email from our ever helpful Aviation Officer (see I can say nice things about HQ people as well) @tmmorris explaining officially that they are currently grounded and to check with AEF before travel. Hopefully other Wg and Region AvO will pass the message on soon.
Yes you should hear from RAvnO/WAvnO a.s.a.p. It’s taken longer than I would have thought to percolate down officially. Ring your AEF if in any doubt.
As said hopefully they will work out the cause quickly. It’s not in any way comparable to the gliding situation in 2014.
It’s not in any way comparable to the gliding situation in 2014.
Yet! I’m sure they’ll find a way to make it comparable.
We have flying this weekend and still nobody within or CoC knows anything about them being grounded…
Speak to your AEF: all the information I have has come from AEF flight commanders. Which AEF are you due to go to?
We’ve heard nothing from 10 AEF. Mind you, since they’re not flying cadets at the moment, we won’t notice the difference!
Which, given the reach and speed of email, is unforgivable in this day and age.
It’s such a basic thing, getting it this badly wrong just makes you think the system either doesn’t care, or doesn’t think. And if either is true, do you really want your kids flying with it?
We were all able to see within a matter of hours that the incident had happened. It was on fb, it was here, it was on Pprune, it was in local news…
It’s 3 days later and there’s been no official word on what’s going on?