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Official - RAF is Short of Aircraft Technicians

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What say you Techies? How do you get the numbers you need? Is it still that bad? Have Scribblies stole all your money?


The RAF is missing hundreds of technicians for aircraft maintenance, according to new figures that heighten concern manning shortages now threaten air safety.


One-in-nine RAF aircraft tradesmen posts are empty the new statistics disclose, just weeks after an air safety watchdog warned defence cuts and a dangerous shortage of engineers are increasing the chances of military air accidents.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...-as-RAF-short-of-hundreds-of-technicians.html
 
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Vim_Fuego said:
What say you Techies? How do you get the numbers you need? Is it still that bad? Have Scribblies stole all your money?





http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...-as-RAF-short-of-hundreds-of-technicians.html
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This is old hat, it was published 8th May 2014!! if anything the situation is worse, gapped posts everywhere and the promise of the return of techie pay was a load of cr4p too. we are all worse off and the Armourers even more so. People will continue to look for the door where they will be gobbled up due to the shortage of engineers in civvy strasse
 
Sorry didn't notice the year lag. Has much changed?
 
Perhaps they need to get the techies back spannering rather than have them drink tea in QCIT Cells, AFCOs and various non-TG1 training establishments.
 
muttywhitedog said:
Perhaps they need to get the techies back spannering rather than have them drink tea in QCIT Cells, AFCOs and various non-TG1 training establishments.
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Unsure if anythings changed, but many of these 'techies' in those kind of jobs I encountered were there for very good reason!

The QCIT on the HOCU was colloquially termed the 'not safe for aircraft office'.
 
MontyPlumbs said:
Unsure if anythings changed, but many of these 'techies' in those kind of jobs I encountered were there for very good reason! The QCIT on the HOCU was colloquially termed the 'not safe for aircraft office'.
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Indeed it can, and has been, a place to hide those who's on task spannering skills are lacking. But not all are there because of their "variable" engineering skills however, some are deliberately using the office bound non spannering techy route to feather the nest for a different career outside the RAF. The much maligned QA Wallahs can earn a decent crust in industry these days. As to the shortage of techies I hear there is a big concerted effort being put in to shorten courses and kick people out of the West Midlands sausage factory as fast as possible. It has become almost impossible to fail, exam resits are legion and extra training is on tap weekly for weaker students. More have been binned for fitness test issues in the last 5 years than a lack of technical skills The return time for AMM's is also being slashed from 2 to 3 years to a mere 12 months. Lord knows how much receiving squadrons will put into developing a bod whose only going to be there less than a year. The requirements of skill and knowledge sets has been replaced by the requirements of budgets and time constraints. The question has changed from "how long does it take to learn X? " to "You have Y hours how much X can you get in?"
 
Thay put a message in every monthly Manning Bulletin to highlight the fact we're short of numbers - the extra 400 AMMs they are recruiting to fill the current gaps will be ready by 2020...........
 
Would any of you that have left come back in now? What sort of incentive would get you back in?
 
Vim_Fuego said:
Would any of you that have left come back in now? What sort of incentive would get you back in?
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I did think about going in the Auggies when they started recruiting Armourers...but the thought of going back through Halton leaves me with cold dread.

Full time? No fcuking chance!
 
MontyPlumbs said:
I did think about going in the Auggies when they started recruiting Armourers...but the thought of going back through Halton leaves me with cold dread.

Full time? No fcuking chance!
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I'll wager some of the techies who went into the oil industry will be re-thinking their path and looking for options now...
 
Vim_Fuego said:
I'll wager some of the techies who went into the oil industry will be re-thinking their path and looking for options now...
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I know a few that did and it already led to other things before the crash. I don't know any that are struggling personally though that's not to say none are.
 
My final post in the RAF was as one of those QA Wallahs, for Laarbruch's Harriers. I left in 1999. This was well before the QCIT thing happened.
10 years after leaving the RAF I started working for BAES at Marham. To say I was shocked at the things I saw would be an understatement. But it was not all the fault of the guys on the shop floor - my flabber was really aghast at the mismanagement that went on and this was personified by the Mantra on a wooden plaque above a door in "Eng Wing" that read "Comfortable with Complication".
This particular saying was even quoted by a Wg Cdr at the time during meetings. To me, this Mantra highlighted the stupidity of engineering management for the whole Tornado fleet and I have since quoted it as the most significant management Human Factors mistake I've ever seen.
I have since left that job due to the same idiocracy blooming in the MAA.
FYI, I am still a QA Wallah, but now the Quality Manager in a medium sized civil aviation organisation. My QA engineers earn about 45K, a bit more than half my earnings.
Would I go back? ....only if I was allowed to make the improvements that are badly needed.
 
Vim_Fuego said:
I'll wager some of the techies who went into the oil industry will be re-thinking their path and looking for options now...
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Well possibly, although as others have said, I'll wager they got used to civvy life (and civvy earnings) and probably jumped to another engineering discipline (I would have). There seems to be a desperate lack of engineering staff in the civvy world, particularly those who have actually picked up and used a spanner at some point in their life.
 
MontyPlumbs said:
Well possibly, although as others have said, I'll wager they got used to civvy life (and civvy earnings) and probably jumped to another engineering discipline (I would have). There seems to be a desperate lack of engineering staff in the civvy world, particularly those who have actually picked up and used a spanner at some point in their life.
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Design Engineers...gold dust! Learn to use a CAD tool like Foran or NX, set yourself up as a limited company and contact a company like Morsons' and start coining it in...I had a couple on my last team...good lads, not stressed and enjoyed their work...sweet.
 
Omerta said:
How long before DE/Direct SAC(T) courses start again? Obviously will need a new spin on it,
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There has been talk of combining the AMM course and the further training course into one entity to avoid duplication of effort, better utilisation of resources etc etc. It's just tea bar chat for now but watch this space if the bean counters think it will be cheaper then it will happen, forget all notion of quality of knowledge transferred, of skills imparted, think budgets and balance sheets think reducing real estate footprint, reduction in staff costs and such like.
 
So rather than inproving pay and conditions / terms of service for current serving personnel (to stop the outflow) and to make 'the offer' more appealing, they're going with the rent-a-crowd option.

Genius.
 
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