RCAF eases medical rules amid pilot shortage
Serious need for experienced flyers to train recruits
“It’s a delicate balance. … Let’s face it, if we don’t have pilots, the air force is redundant. TERRY CHESTER, AIR FORCE ASSOCIATION OF CANADA NATIONAL PRESIDENT
OTTAWA — Canada’s air force has been bending on minimum medical standards such as vision and hearing requirements as it contends with a critical shortage of experienced pilots.
The Royal Canadian Air Force has long struggled to retain enough trained military pilots to fly its fighter jets, search-and-rescue aircraft and helicopters, but a growing “experience gap” is adding to the problem.
RCAF spokesman Maj. James Simiana said the gap’s origins can be traced to the 1990s, when the Chrétien government slashed about onethird of the military’s ranks and put a freeze on new hiring.
The problem has been worsened in recent years by heavy recruitment of military flyers by civilian airlines, and a mass exodus of baby boomers due to retirement.
“The RCAF has sufficient pilot recruits and pilots undergoing flying training, but not enough experienced pilots that are required to train new pilots, to mentor less experienced RCAF pilots,” Simiana said in an email.
As a result, the air force has been accepting retired RCAF pilots and recruiting recently laid-off British military aviators to deal with the shortfall.
“The point here is to show that we’re taking mitigating action to counter a challenging demographic situation,” Simiana said.
But secret briefing documents obtained by Postmedia News show that air force of- ficials have had to seek waivers for some of those experienced aviators who failed to meet minimum medical standards.
In one case, air force officials asked that a former RCAF helicopter pilot who had retired after 37 years in the military be allowed to rejoin despite failing an unspecified medical standard.
“In the past three years, precedent has been set by granting waivers for the enrolment of several applicants whose medical categories were below the pilot occupation minimum for enrolment,” RCAF deputy commander Maj.-Gen. Michael Hood wrote in the briefing note.
In another case, Rear Admiral Andrew Smith, who was then chief of military personnel, was asked if a former British air force pilot could join the RCAF even though he wasn’t a Canadian citizen and his vision did not meet minimum standards.
Air force officials noted the RCAF’s pilot shortfall in their letter to Smith, and said “a special need did in fact exist” for the British aviator.
Hood justified the moves by arguing that the “milliondollar cost” of pilot training “warrants the high initial medical standard” to which recruits are held.
“Skilled pilot re-enrollees do not incur these upfront costs and therefore repre- sent a valuable commodity while the pilot occupation remains significantly (undermanned),” Hood concluded.
Simiana would not say how many experienced pilots the air force needs.
But he said the experience and skills experienced pilots bring to the table compensate for reduced vision.
Air Force Association of Canada national president and for mer RCAF pilot Terry Chester said minimum medical standards for such things as vision, hearing, heart beat and blood pressure are set for a good reason.
But he was also confident senior air force commanders would not risk lives or multimillion-dollar equipment by putting unfit pilots in the cockpit.
“The first airplane that took off with a less-than-qualified pilot in the air and crashed and killed the pilot,” Chester said, “the air force commander would be up in front of the chief of defence staff with his hat under his arm looking at a court martial.”
Chester said the fact the RCAF is bending on the medical requirements to bolster the number of experienced pilots it has speaks to the air force’s severe shortage of bodies.
“It’s a delicate balance,” he said of the standards. “But we obviously need pilots in the cockpit. Because let’s face it, if we don’t have pilots, the air force is redundant.”
Then-RCAF commander lieutenant-general Andre Deschamps warned last year that the air force was missing a number of pilots with 10 to 20 years of experience, which has created a leadership and mentoring challenge.
“The pressure will remain probably for the next several years, and probably close to the end of the decade before we rebalance the demographic in a more sustainable fashion,” Deschamps told the Senate defence committee.
RCAF officials also secretly warned in 2011 that they would not be able to produce the 125 new pilots needed each year because of the shortfall in experienced aviators.
It’s unclear how many retired RCAF pilots have been readmitted into the air force in recent years, or how many British military flyers have been recruited.
There were reports in 2012 that as many as 35 British Royal Air Force pilots and other personnel were in line to be accepted after the United Kingdom announced plans to cut 5,000 men and women in uniform, including about 170 pilots, over the next five years.
The RCAF has also established loan programs with counterparts in the United Kingdom, Germany and France in which it borrows pilots for a period of time.
A briefing note prepared for RCAF commander Lt.-Gen. Yvan Blondin said the loan programs were developed “as a means to alleviate critical shortages of experienced pilots at some units within the RCAF.”
As of October, a dozen British pilots had been loaned to the Canadian Forces for up to three years, while two German helicopter pilots and one French pilot are working with RCAF units.