Issue 243: Power On

Power flight

Keeping hold of and motivating its junior helicopter pilots, observers, and crewmen has been a difficult task for the Royal Australian Navy of late, particularly while its three operational helicopter types, the Seahawk, Seasprite, and Sea King, suffer from upgrade program set-backs, service entry problems, and just plain old age.

With morale low and around 40 junior aircrew projected by Navy planners to be waiting for operational flight training (OFT) on only a handful of these types by August 2008, their immediate pros-pects were looking grim.