are you dismayed at the news that RAF trainee pilots are not being allowed to finish their training?

I think the trainees have invested years of their life and trust so the very least they should have is to be allowed to complete their training and then time to find civilian flying jobs.

The decision to simply abort their training is heartless and unfair. Don't they have any contract which the MoD must honour as their employer?

It may be dismaying - but if you don't have an aircraft for them to fly there's not much point in completing the training.

Spare a thought for the 38 Senior NCO's who were sacked by the MOD this week - by email. One of them actually got the notification on deployment in Afghanistan.

The last time a petition was started over MOD cuts was in 2005 by the Sun newspaper "keep the Red Arrows Flying". The petition worked and the Sun, plus the airshow anoraks, were over the moon.

What they didn't tell you was that 6 Squadrons of the RAF Regiment were disbanded (boots on the ground for Afghanistan), 1,000 personnel lost their jobs and the RAF lost all the Rapier missile kit to keep the Arrows flying.

HM Forces always get the sh!t end of the stick, regardless of who's in power. I can guarantee that if they keep these trainee pilots someone else, somewhere, will get the chop.

As the top brass have said, this is ridiculously short sighted. Osbourne seems to be so focused on cuts, cuts, cuts, that he hasn't considered the impact any of the cuts will have on people's lives, he hasn't considered the costs involved in making those cuts, and generally has ignored value for money! You just need to look at the well publicised fiasco in scrapping brand new Nimrods that were basically ready for service, keeping aircraft carriers with no aircraft that can take off of them (not even the french because our new £5bn carriers need to have catapults attached), making 100 pilots redundant which aside from leaving a talent gap in the ranks, is a waste of hundreds of millions of pounds in addition to having to make redundancy payments for those that have been in for more than 2 years!! So let me get this straight, we can afford to keep an aircraft carrier that we can't use, but we can't afford to keep a maritime patrol aircraft that as an island nation we sorely need, we can afford to propose a random tax break for married people, but we can't afford to keep our servicemen or police officers... I'm not blaming anyone, but I will just say that I didn't vote either Tory or Lib Dem!!

No point having the pilots if there's no aircraft to fly

Good that you voted labour then Master, we can blame you then for scrapping the sea harrier and the debacle over eurofighter and the signing of a contract that in the event of cancelling a carrier it costs more in penalties than to go through with it!

Yes, start a petition, they're not actually saving the economy, they've ALREADY spent £300,000,000 on their training, we're still making a loss of £296,000,000, not to mention that many of the pilots have specifically chosen GCSEs, A Levels and in many cases University courses to mean they can do the training. Someone in the government has gone mad.

Very bad idea and terrible for nearly qualified pilots. To think that William got his 'Wings' after 3 months is laughable

the MOD has been so INEPT for 30-40 years no wonder they're losing 20,000 jobs

A bad day to bury bad news!

They are not the only one's affected by cuts, at least with the training they've had so far they could stay in aviation in civvy street

Well we could always get some volunteers, and some volunteer aircraft under Camerons big society plan to replace them

No, because we don't need RAF pilots. Bloody state-sponsored parasites, with their cushy pensions. Not real jobs at all. They should contribute to this country properly by becoming estate agents and management consultants.

yes very............apart form anything else that's roughly 100m in training costs down the toilet!!