What is your reaction?

[ammotrucker]

It isn't a realistic scenario at all.  If there is a fire on landing, why would the crew be sent off to an undisclosed location to be found?  Wouldn't they be there on the airport?  If the helicopter is supposed to take them somewhere near the airport which is supposed to be their "crashed" plane, then that might be fine, but why waste a helo on this?  Can be done without it.  Use the helo for something more fun and useful. 

The purpose that I invisioned was more to the point of losing COMMS no communication back to MB and then porceeding with the notion that the event took place from a time frame after lost COMMs not a fire on the ramp.

I understand the vital aspect of training to be proficient.  But, we also need to train on things that normally we do not train on.. 

This was menetioned by one of the helo pilots.  That he had undergone a similar mission in a past life.  But, being part of the aircrew.

My mafor point is all the training I have seen.  Is to CUT AND DRIED.  There needs to be some form of being out of the BOX.

[LittleIronPilot]

  It could be a good deal, but as mentioned above, if an aircrew shows up ready to fly, and then told they aren't, you may get some upset people who didn't clear their calendar to be a Ground Team Target.

This is one of the single biggest issues, people showing up with the notion that "I am therefore I shall".

Just because you are a pilot DOES NOT mean that you are going to fly, or that you deserve to.  If I set this scenario up and had an aircrew tell me NO, they would be grounded.

If you are qualified in a specialty you can and will be used where you are needed regardless of your desires. 

There is no place for people to show up, tell the base staff what they are going to do and expect to get it.  That is simply unreasonable.

As for the question at hand.  Go for it, you will quickly learn who is here to learn and who is here to fly on the AF's dime

Thank you!

As our squadron ES officer, I want our people to cross-train as much as possible in all ES quals. Why? Simple...to fulfill the mission.

If someone is down (for real) and both birds are full-up by the time you get there and you are ES qual'ed in GTM....you are going on a van, or at least you should be willing to get on the van. If you are not willing then why are you in CAP?

[RiverAux]

For the afternoon, he walked up to a crew that was getting ready to depart and told them when they would "lose communications, " go land somewhere, and sit and wait and that they weren't to respond to anyone

Personally I am not a big fan of this sort of thing because I would treat this as an actual SAR situation and would start notifying other agencies of a missing airplane unless it was resolved within a very short period of time.   

[JayT]

In planning a SAREX for the Group.  I decided that to of the taskings will be to have an A/C landing, telling the FLM or FLS to notify the Air crew that there A/C is on fire.

At that time they would be escorted to an awaiting Helo and drop off at an undisclosed locating to await rescue.

My question is how OUT OF THE ORIDINARY would this be?
What would your reaction be, if you were the Aircrew?

Homicidal rage?

[baronet68]

I think throwing unexpected things at the base staff is a very good idea.  At our last SAREX, the IC arranged for a cadet to "break his ankle" followed by collapsing and losing consciousness.    As the IC trainee is a paramedic, it was a good distraction to see if the rest of the team could cover.  While this was going on, he pulled the power on the building, told us we had just had a big earthquake, and that  someone else had to figure out how to start the generator...

WAWG's Group III did something similar during a Sarex - Mission base was located near Mount Rainier (volcano) which had a simulated eruption at about 10am.  The entire operation was moved to another base 70 miles away without missing a beat.  Very stressful, but very successful too.

Edit: The 'eruption' was unplanned so it really caught people off guard and exposed real problems, like having an aircrew that couldn't immediately go home because their POVs were 70 miles away from where they landed.