Well as I say, it’s more a case of radical thinking. I don’t think chopping a couple of days out of one week’s flying and shifting it to a weekend is much to ask of personnel at all, especially when it would save a lot of work for personnel who would normally have to give-up a weekend to deal with an air show. As I said, the Navy manages to go off on leave when it suits them so I don’t see why the RAF couldn’t be as flexible – we’re only talking about one week a year maybe. So what if flying is scrubbed for a couple of days and moved? No big deal once a year.
As for the value of the training, I don’t see how that adds up. Surely, if all RAF flying was simply shifted to a weekend then the same flying would be taking place – including trade – that would otherwise have taken place during the week.
In essence, something along the lines I suggested would be far less disruptive to RAF operations than even a normal air show. Granted, it would still require personnel to oversee the public side of the event, but compared to a normal air show it certainly requires less time and cost for pre-rehearsed air display sequences. In essence it would be rather like arranging a Tactical Fighter Meet or a Joint Warrior – something like that, at a base where the public can have their show site on the other side of the runway. No air display flying (well maybe you could slip-in the BBMF and Reds at the end of the day!), just aircraft going about their business, and a few requests for aircraft to fly through or do a roller/overshoot or flyby. The result is a flying schedule which would have been taking place in any case, the only difference being that the public is there to see it. For the enthusiast the result is a much more interesting display than any show organiser could hope to stage these days.
All it requires is that shift of attitude to grasp the notion of block-movement of flying, and the concept of combining regular activities with public scrutiny. Absolutely no reason why it couldn’t be done and we’d all be a lot better off, RAF, public and enthusiasts alike. It’s just the problem of convincing conservative thinkers that just can’t imagine doing anything differently, methinks.
I get the idea, and never knock new thinking but I’m sure most punters would want to see quite a few solo/multi dislays of a/c being wrung out rather than just t/os & landings. Of course they scrubbed the best crowd pleaser and new way of thinking this year that was an absolute success – the RAF role demo….:rolleyes:
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