I recall a similar question and military flight option was more to do with operational flights were unpredictable and took precedence, which was seen as a good excuse. The airline points seemed to be weaker and maybe more about the timescales involved, ie you are trapped into paying more as the lack of commitment to host. The earlier you can book and confirm it gives more options.
We put 50-60 kids on the Space Camp and flights booked as soon as possible (mid-June) for the following year, which helps to keep the cost down. Fly somewhere on holiday and the sooner itās booked (unless youāre into last minute deals) the better the price. Maybe as an organisation we need earlier confirmation of camp hosting and or a more imaginative payment arrangement.
^ this.
Indulgence flights are available to cadets/staff on duty, however the flights (to Cyprus) are twice-weekly - meaning that if you get bumped off in favour of something more pressing then you are well and truly stuck.
The only way you could make it work is charge the full price for having to sort out civvy flights at the last minute, and then refund people if you donāt use them (but you still have lots of headaches sorting everything out when it happens)
I recall the days when some of our guys used indulgence flights. BZN to the US and back for Ā£38, Cyprus for Ā£19 and Germany for Ā£11. One of our lads went to Hong Kong for Ā£50 return.
Iāve still got the original forms somewhere. The only catch was that if you WERE bumped off a return flight, you had to prove you could pay for a commercial ticket home before theyād let you utilise the indulgence scheme.
Someone really needs to look at airline costs here.
Only as a sample, I searched easyJet for 20 āadultsā (16 & over) & 20 āchildrenā (15 & under), for 10 day duration in May 2017, Gatwick to Larnaca. Schedule not the greatest, arrive Larnaca 2205, return back to Gatwick 0125! However, less than Ā£200 returnā¦
BA is showing more civilised times, less cost than that.
Capacity to get 40+ cadets back if bumped off indulgence/duty flights could be difficult.
Pin down the camp dates, sort out cheaper air travel.
Any options via CivComms to take āadvanceā drip-feed payments in anticipation of selection for overseas camps? No selection, get refunded.
The problem is that HQAC wonāt just book the flights, they wait until they have the money as tens have been stung in the past.
If they just say āwe are running camp on X datesā and bought the tickets it would save a bomb!
There was an issue this year where the flights were not booked earlier which greatly increased the Airfare, apparently itās not normal practice.
However the cost of the camp resulted in 3 of the 5 weeks being cancelled due to a lack of staff cover, and some of the camps were also short on cadets.
[quote=āthemajor, post:26, topic:2630, full:trueā]
There was an issue this year where the flights were not booked earlier which greatly increased the Airfare, apparently itās not normal practice.
However the cost of the camp resulted in 3 of the 5 weeks being cancelled due to a lack of staff cover, and some of the camps were also short on cadets.[/quote]
If for whatever reasons camps are cancelled or short of cadets/staff, it will inevitably result in losing the camps altogether. The RAF is shrinking and people and resources stretched and it will become easier to reduce the camp allocations, which are a fraction of what I remember ā¦ camp photos say it all. The smallest squadron only photo (done by the RAF not a self-taken one) Iāve got from annual camp is of 16.
This year the annual camp although the cadets flew, there was no shooting or swimming, section visits were limited and the cadets ended up wearing green all week and going on ācivvieā trips. In my day the programme was full with visits to different sections, shooting, swimming, flying, activities after tea and the cultural day out, which was a chance to get to the pub without having to worry about staff seeing you.
Yep - I did it last year, Ā£30 out and ā¬40 back (Brize-Akrotiri).
Not available to ACO personnel who arenāt on duty though, IIRC which is a bit of a shame.
Well, where do I start?
Emails - I used to have my @aircadets.org email permanently on; it depressed me. So much stuff arriving with ludicrous deadlines, ācascadedā without any thought/input/filtering from hierarchy and rarely written in Queenās English (I spent 23 years in the RAF and we didnāt use half as many abbreviations). Donāt even mention the endless assumptions that cdts can be magically generated as rent-a-crowd (complete with TG21s and a PIPE) for someoneās grip-and-grin opportunity tomorrow evening. I despair when I open my Inbox.
Bureaucracy - I āgetā some of it and I actually think BADER (SMS) dulls the pain. But the whole system has turned into extremely sticky treacle. Combine this with the thirst for a TG21 (&TG23) whenever Cdt Bloggs wants to do anything and we become smothered in paperwork. On my Sqn I am the ONLY uniformed member of staff (by no means unique) and the regulatory requirements placed upon me (CIs are often excluded) are overwhelming. I would love to actually see my cadets but 95% of my time on Sqn is sorting paperwork. And before anyone says do it at home, thatās rather difficult when I spend so much of my working time away from home. Throw in an admin issue (troublesome cadet, possible safeguarding etc) and the role is almost full time.
Cdt opportunities - I actually think there are more now than 30 years ago. However, they are often aimed at individuals and there is rarely a chance for a sqn to do something itself, unless the sqn chooses to do that and convinces the CivCom to find the cash. Furthermore, your hands are then tied by having to have appropriately qualified and gendered staff with the necessary ratios. Picking-up on the camp theme, we had 6 places allocated this year spread across 4 different locations; teenagers donāt want to go away with strangers.
I could go on but I actually try to have a life outside of the ACO. Bitter and twisted? Yes. Do I let this rub-off on my cadets? No. It is still a fantastic organisation that needs people like us to make it work.
Chin up mate. We all feel the same
We might all feel the same and make this clear, but nothing happens, as the people pulling the strings have no notion of what their eternal fiddling entails. It would interesting of one of the policy makers actually shadowed a sqn cdr through their real life and ATC life, so that they could better appreciate what they do and sacrifice day in, day out. Similar to spottheblip I no longer monitor ATC emails everyday and keep it just for parade nights, I used to have it linked to personal email, but no more as I found at work and home I was reacting to them and not what was really important. Iāve been the only uniform on a unit and wasnāt too bad, still bloody hard work, but now if you kept it up for any longer than a year, because you have to, you could easily have a breakdown. Would HQAC care not one bit. If an employer treated people in a similar way to the way HQAC treats the volunteer staff with must do this, must do that etc all in your spare time, without full support and equipping (or full refund of outlay) theyād be in the courts and not doing business. One of the new cadetās dadās who runs a Sunday football team asked about being staff, when I told him what he needed to do he said no, but he did join the CWC. He thought player registration and organising fixtures, pitches etc etc was task, nothing like what we have to do.
I read the āregistered CWC memberā, document and you can see people who have no real idea came up with a process that makes them to all intents a CI, when all it needed was a one-sider. All but two of our CWC have enhanced DBS and I said to them thatās all they need to have, anything greater would mean staff thinking they can take a backward step, if they were going and I couldnāt honestly see how they could contribute more than they do.
Ignore GHE2^ above. Heās a billy two-pooās. (Youāve had one, heās had two).
If we all feel the same, as you suggest and feelings made clear, why is there no change. Saying āchin upā is all well and good if you can see an end to a situation, which I assume the spottheblip canāt, so far too many carry on because no one else wants the job. I suppose we can always close squadrons if no one wants to be the OC, which will mean most staff and cadets will also leave faced with longer journeys.
Wing, HQAC etc have never shown the slightest concern about what people have to do within the Corps and no concern if peopleās real lives arenāt running smoothly for whatever reason. Illness (personal or in the family), bereavement, job losses/changes all pass by, with one chap I know being told you can always resign when he said he was taking a step back from being CO when he lost his job, so he resigned and the sqn didnāt get a CO for about a year, with expected results WRT numbers. What was called pastoral care in our kids school is non-existent for adults in the organisation.
When you look at the āpoint of the ATCā staff need to figure in that as well, in terms of getting a positive experience. Many staff (ex-cadets mostly) not just COs get an overall negative one, for different reasons, but carry on because they see the benefit of extra curricula activities for youngsters when it comes to job/college/uni applications.
If one doesnāt āchin upā one tends to spiral into a loath pit of despair and only becomes a pain to others. Much like you.
Iāve been out for a good few years now and havenāt really paid much attention to whatās going on. Things look more challenging than ever from a staff perspective, especially staff who have seen what the organisation has offered in the past. But is the lack of āairā or āadventureā having an impact on cadet numbers? are squadrons going under (or are establishment numbers being ignored to ensure units survive?) Or are things pretty stable? I understand that you may have to go on your own personal viewpoint if official figures donāt exist
I met up with a couple of mates yesterday for pint to work out what we can do over the next 3-4 months. Once done the new commission came up and each one of us (with a combined ATC service of around 110 years man and boy) felt that the Corps is now at a pivotal point.
There is an opportunity to complete overhaul our rasion dāetre.
How relevant is promoting an interest in the RAF?
When I speak to āold boysā at RAFA and in the RBL many joined the ATC as it was a good stepping stone to service in the RAF and a couple of now deceased chaps said that they joined the ADCC/ATC in 1939-45 because they wanted to go into the RAF during WW2, and, when we joined the ATC there was a relevant and viable RAF that we were exposed to and it was a good source of jobs for anyone wanting to join up. But now how long can it remain a separate āforceā?
We felt it would be much, much better to look at linking the Corps more formally into the civilian industry much more and maybe have camps which are based near manufacturers and airports, which may also have the more lucrative spin off of external sponsorship and funding for the Corps and release us from the RAF/MoD, even down to command of the Corps. Iād feel more than comfortable running the squadron without anyone above me.
I have to admit speaking to some of the āold boysā, some of whom volunteered in the ATC as staff, the ATC seemed a much simpler organisation, than what we have today. Could we ever get back to that?
The service and civilian life bit is also increasing irrelevant in terms of service life and should be revised to something like working life and lose the civilian life, as that always reads as being less worthy than a service life. The basics of things like teamwork, discipline self and broader, self-reliance are essential and always been for work and we felt some sort of discussion topic should be introduced to bring critical thinking into this as a āskillā for life. This might help to assist in resolving some of the problems that turn up in relation to ācadet relationshipsā and get the cadets to discuss more broadly issues concerning them in terms of their relationships on/off the sqn.
The only aspect we felt that should remain unchanged is the adventure and good citizen parts, but make getting involved in the local community and especially supporting RAFA and the RBL compulsory and allowing support of other charities and making āadventureā less of a bind to access. Why we canāt just use registered commercial providers without messing around with getting their insurance and so on, is baffling. Itās interesting that weāll stop off at McD, BK, KFC, chippies, burger vans etc for food without thinking, yet fast food places could debilitate a cadet or member of staff just the same as an accident on an activity and we donāt have to get insurance, EH certificates, staffās food safety certs to use these.
Leadership is still a little too focussed on the process driven military model and should maybe reflect the professional / knowledge / experience model that is seen in the workplace.
We also talked about a bottom up approach to changes, but felt that it was a step too far for many. But itās what we tend to do on our squadrons and at work and we generally get to a compromise position.
Hi Teflon,
From earlier on in this thread, āWSMā = what, please?
I can empathise with much of your concern as to the ACOās trajectory, but I am somewaht bemused at some of your notions and proposals.
I was 5 years a cadet, 36 years a serviceman, 3 years a service helper / civilian instructor and am now, Lawd help me, on the path to going into uniformed ATC service. I believe my ATC background was a prime driver to my acceptance into the RAF but I never got involved in ATC stuff whilst I was in, but I promised myself that I would āpay my duesā to the ATC once I left the service.
Todayās RAF is a very different outfit to the one I joined. Down fom 90,000 to 30,000 folks. A fast-jet frontline of well-under 100 aircraft. RAF Germany gone. Many UK bases closed. Terms and conditions of service changed significantly (many would say eroded but they are still better than most civilian organisations). However, it is still a quality organisation that offers many opportunities to those who wish to join. And I do wish that there were greater emphasis on its support to the ACO, or at the very least a consistently high-level of attention from station commanders ad ACLOs.
To cut off links with the RAF but still make support to RBL/RAFA compulsory seems mutually exclusive. How is a squadron in, say, the outer reaches of rural Norfolk supposed to obtain meaningful avaiation-related commercial sponsorship?
I am in awe of the amount of their non-working time that many volunteer air cadet staff are prepared to put into this youth organisation; they deserve the fullest praise and recognition. However, I would opine that there is a some reluctance to embrace ex-military people who want to offer their services.
I would fully agree that many of the hoops that have to be jumped through are ridiculous. A Range Conducting Officer, Safety Supervisor, Ammunition Orderly(!) and First Aider to run an indoor air rifle range is mind boggling when I can pay 50p and pick up a near-lethal air rifle at a local fairground stand.
And 40+ signature blocks in the First Class Cadet Log Book to signify a pass, let alone Merit or Distinction. Which clown(s) thought that was a good idea?
Anyway, nuff said.
Why? Itās right there in the aims. Iāve certainly never read it as such.
Reading some of this and it reminds me of what the local SCC unit told me.
APPARENTLY and perhaps one of the SCC staff that look in can confirm thisā¦
The SCC broke away from being under navy rules, training etc in the 70s to follow merchant navy training practices,but are now trying to go reverse this as itās not working for them.
With them being more of a charity and lack of navy support they are struggling as they need to be nearly fully self sufficient.
As I said this is only what I was told by the local unit so it may not be the full truth but would be interesting to find out before people start suggesting moving from the RAF.
When we spoke about commercial aviation related sponsorship it was on a Corps wide basis to replace the MOD funding in part or in toto, not local and the opportunities via visits etc to see what options are available in terms of employment, pretty much as we used to get with the RAF. Many summer camps were a chance to see what job options there were. There is a need to lose the grip the RAF has, after all a formal link to air cadets came in 1941 only after the ADCC provided high calibre recruits 1939-41. But now is there a need for such a link? There are more aviation industry employment options in the civilian side of things than in the military and cadets should be more fully exposed to these. Be it working in a role at an airport, or, engineering or some aspect of the flying side, that may have a much wider appeal to more cadets. As well as that we have 3 flying schools within 40 minutes and another 2 within an hour of where we live and if the civilian side of that was more fully embraced, we could probably get more flying for cadets and not have a 2ish hour drive to 5 AEF on the hope they might be able to fly cadets.
I think the problem with embracing ex-servicemen/women is enshrined in Corps policy which fails to recognise any experience / qualifications etc they have or had which I would find galling, unless they are Gp Capt or above when they are deemed suitably experienced etc to run the ATC. At sqn level all I want is someone to come along and get stuck in whatever their background, day to day I need people who are prepared to deliver instruction on whatever needs covering, ex-service or not. The vast majority of ex-servicemen/women Iāve met in recent years have really been quite negative about their experiences (hardly surprising to a degree) and not really what Iād want cadets exposed to.
I still think the links to organisations such as RAFA and RBL etc are important for the community angle. My Legion branch has older Scouts fully involved in Poppy Appeal collections and Scouts have no military link and years ago the local Boys Brigade were as well, so if we loosened the ties to the RAF things like this are still relevant and pertinent.