Page 102 - Demo
P. 102
102courses to Pearce AFB at Perth until the problem was solved. At much the same time, July 1999, the RAF had also bought into yet another Canadian enterprise, the NFTC %u2013 NATO Flying Trainingin Canada %u2013 which provides a comprehensive, contractor8run, fast8jet syllabus from basic flying training up to entry to OCU standard. The RAF undertook to send twenty students per year from 2000 to 2020 to do just Phase IV, the tactical Hawk element of the course. While not actually %u2018withdrawing%u2019 from the scheme, in 2008 the RAF %u2018reduced its throughput to zero%u2019 and once the last UK students had passed through the seven RAF QFIs were recalled. An aspect of internationalism that I have not yet mentioned is the provision of flying training in the UK, to the air forces of other nations. The RAF used to do this quite extensively %u2013 and profitably. When No 6 FTS was failing to train me (and a lot of other people) to become a pilot in 1960, I was rubbing shoulders at Ternhill with Ghanaians, Sudanese, Lebanese, Jordanians, Malayans and Indonesians (and there were Iraqis, Syrians and Kenyans elsewhere within the system at that time) but, as an instructor at No 6 FTS in the mid81970s, I taught only Nigerian navigators. More recently, between 2004 and 2007 a total of 72 Indian Air Force pilots (twelve courses of six) did the Hawk Course at Valley but the thirteenth course were all QFIs and since then the Indians have been doing it themselves on their own Hawks. And I believe that that has been more or less it, of late. Sadly, it would appear that, in the UK training game, as Lionel Bart put it, %u2018Fings ain%u2019t wot they used to be.%u2019 One of the CT?155 Hawk Mk 115s operated by Bombardier under contract to the NFTC.

