This policy has given me a right kick in the old knackers. I'm due OOA in Jan, and my wife is pregnant, due to drop in March. I was hoping to wangle my R & R to coincide with the birth date.
Now I don’t want to drop someone else in the poo, but what are my choices now? I'd rather not pull that card, and the R & R would have hopefully given me a chance to complete my OOA and be there for my wife and child.
I fully aware of what the Chf Clk and manning can do for me, but surely the policy stating 'it puts an hardship (or whatever it was) on family life' has surely been trumped in this instance?
On another point, exactly how many aircraft do we provide primarily for the purpose of R & R? I thought they just jumped on the next trooper available? If one was not available you caught the next one that was? How would savings be borne from this (honest question)?
What about the peeps in the Falklands? They could never get an ac home for R & R, so how does this save them any money here (apart from not providing vehicles etc)
I think a bit more thought should go into this. If the sole purpose is to place us into 6 month dets, then please do it. The cynical side of me says that they want us to kick up a stink about it, so they can then give us the solution of the 6 months (where you get R & R) to the problem
OK, lots of points to be addressed here. Firstly, had your career manager been aware that your wife was pregnant you would probably been overlooked for a few rotations before being warned for deployment. That's not going to help you now, but bear it in mind if you plan any more kids.
Secondly, if you were planning to be home on R&R for your child's birth then it's either for a scheduled caesarian or it's your first child and you have yet to appreciate how inconsiderate the little bu99ers can be!
I'm not an expert on calculating aircraft passenger requirements except to say that R&R is a big part of the calculation. For reasons that I won't go into here, R&R travel is afforded a higher priority than almost any other category with the obvious exception of casualty and compassionate travel. The decision on the number and type of trooping aircraft allocated to the airbridge will have been made after taking all factors into account. That said, serviceability of aircraft is a different issue and we all know that delayed/cancelled flights have a much larger impact than might reasonably be planned for.
The RAF Families' Federation, who were involved in the decision to enforce the R&R policy more stringently than before, have stated that a standard tour of 4 months (albeit without R&R) should be maintained, so we're not looking at wholesale longer op tours. Yet.
Finally, back to you. What is more important to you - the guilt that you will feel at forcing one of your colleagues to deploy 4 months early, or the guilt that you will feel at missing the birth of your son/daughter? It's a tough choice and only you can make it.
DT_Xtremez_06:
