Air Force has a pilot shortage

Well the mainline carriers are hiring pilots like crazy. As long as that is happening the Air Force, Navy, regional airlines and small cargo operators will have a hard time keeping people.

 

$35K

Perhaps a few thousand additional dollars and new leather jacket will make a difference ?




I will fly for free, if they send me to school. ...years ago, I missed it by one minor ailment (not the eyes). I already have a reserve commission in the Army NG (this will save additional money). I also have tail-dragger time .

 

Every year there's a shortage.

 

Normal for USAF. Too many pilots, not enough pilots, panic, too many pilots, airlines hiring, not enough pilots, panic, repeat. Has been happening ever since I joined in 1972 when they jettisoned too many pilots post-Viet-Nam. Many friends got out, flew for the airlines, flew for the Guard or Reserve and still retired as full colonels at age 60 while still flying for the airlines.

 

This is exactly right. The AF has always had a binary approach to training and retaining pilots...full on and full off. It's compounded by robust airline hiring now, horrible leadership in most units after 8 years of drinking oval office cool aide, and most pilots don't believe in the mission any more. They know their whole military is fighting with one hand tied behind their backs, guys on the ground are dying and getting maimed by the thousands for absolutely nothing, and nobody cares.

 

So a $35K bonus on top of what? What is the typical salary for an AF pilot? I read a similar article yesterday, and it made it sound as a good portion of the pilot shortage were drone pilots. Do they get the same compensation?

 

Interesting. I've been in for 31 years and can count on one hand the number of guys who match that description.

 

Moral as well in my opinion and looming war? Look who's running the show. Today's video gamers if they had half a spine and patriotic bones would make good pilots?

 

Things may be different in the Navy but if you were Air Force there are really two options for someone with 31 years in that hasn't seen a large number of people with that attitude:

The first is that you are an O-7 or higher (maybe an O-6 with some special circumstances) and are drinking enough of the blue Kool Aid that you don't recognize the problem much less realize you are part of it.

The second is that you are in the Guard (maybe reserves) and have been in a unit/career field that has lived a very sheltered existence the last 15 years.

I'm not going to say the majority of people absolutely feel the way Hannibal describes but it wouldn't be an outlandish claim either.

Depends on a lot of factors but a Major with ten years in is gonna have a take home income a little over $100k. Its a bit complicated as some income is tax free so I figure giving the take home number is easiest.

The bonuses are complicated as well as they don't always pay out all at once, some are over a period of years.

 

Killer. I didn't mean that they aren't patriots and strong believers in the American way. What I mean is that many are looking around and saying to themselves "what the hell are we doing, and why, and for who?" When you take intelligent guys and put them in a mission that has become the active duty pilot equivalent of working on an assembly line, it gets old, there's no progress, and nobody's winning. Being on a winning team matters if you're a winner.

 

I was enlisted - Navy Nuc.

Our re-up bonuses were quite a bit higher than that. For me, would have been $50k to add an additional 2 years.

But then? No - they're talking ANNUAL bonus for these pilots, and talking of bumping it to $48k/year.

Just gonna say? If you're active flight duty, and they offer you $35k to $48k MORE per year than you're making now? Why on EARTH would you turn it down? I've never ONCE heard anyone I know who flew warbirds say they regretted it.

 

I make a very good living. I'd give it all up today if you said I can poke holes in the sky with 40,000#'s of thrust strapped to my ass. Yes, I'll take the risk of some a-holes on the ground trying to ram a SAM up my tailpipe. The time away from the family would be the hardest part. I'd do it for free (I'm not lying). Now you tell me I can take home $100K plus a $30-50K signing bonus per year? And yes, I did look at enlisting when I was eligible (young enough), being a fighter pilot was my dream from the very first time I saw Top Gun. I was told by the recruiter and a couple of pilots I spoke to that were in the reserves that I was too tall and my eyesight would never allow me to fly an "F" designation. No offence to Mark, but flying rubber dog **** out of Hong Kong doesn't hold the same allure for me, not interested in the "C" designation, it's a great job I just wouldn't give up all I have for it. I balled my eyes out at 14 when I left the opthamologists office with the news I needed glasses, I knew the moment he said it what that meant to my dream. I tried anyways at 18 and again at 27 (which as I recall was the oldest I could enlist at). This was all before they started allowing Lasic corrected eyesight for any of the designations.

 

Well you active duty guys can correct me if I'm wrong. One of the big problems with the Air Force pilot retention issue is "career progression". You go thru training and then go to a squadron. At first your job is to get fully qualified. Then you start getting assigned "additional duties". They start out simple enough, usually for the newest guys it's snack bar officer where it's your job to keep the snack bar stocked with food. As time goes on your duties require more and more of your time. Most fighter guys work 12 hours a day with a smaller and smaller percentage of your time spent on flying. After a while your are sent to do a group or wing level job. At this point a lot of guys are essentially down graded to staying current and are no longer combat ready. After about 12 years or so you can expect to go to a career broadening assignment where you don't fly at all. At that point in time you may get back to a cockpit at all and if you do it's at most flying once or twice a month. Now not everyone does this and some pilots get to actually fly for most of their careers but they are by far the exceptions.

Add to this the fact at some point in your life you will no longer be in the military. Max time in grade, Majors gone at a max of 20 years, LTC 28 years etc. While the military retirement is a good deal it isn't nearly enough to live on. Combine this with guys/gals at this age have kids probably starting college and they are faced with having to start over with brand new jobs at a time in their lives when they really need to be maxing their income.

There have been countless surveys of what the pilots want/need to make them want to stay in. The leadership has never addressed what the real problems are and instead just try to throw money at the problem hoping to fix the problem with bad results.

 

As Taz stated, military manning is cyclical. Always has been, always will be. And with each cycle, each branch of the military gains fairly accurate insight into what the driving factors are - economic conditions, civilian opportunities, family considerations, relocations, aging parents, promotion opportunities, generational motivators, etc.

The calculation to leave the service has many variables and they're always changing. It's fairly straightforward to analyze the relative weight of current ones, but virtually impossible to predict future ones.

You are correct in that most service members will face the decision of if/when to leave. But as wide-spread motivators, the drivers you and Mark cite are not supported by research.

 

Here I am,Air Force! I am always available!

 

When I was active duty, we had a standing joke:

What is the difference between the Boy Scouts and the USAF?

Adult leadership.

 

No shortage over here if they wanna go ahead and give us those A-10's


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I'd give up my job to fly an F designation AF jet, but with all this shortage they talk about I doubt they'll give anyone an age waiver let alone me at 31.

 

I don't know about non prior service people but I know guys in their mid 30s who are being sent to pilot training from other career fields. It's as if ten years ago some general on the personnel side of the house made a bet with some general on the acquisitions side of things that they could **** things up worse. He look! You are gonna **** up the F-35 by XX billions but it doesn't even matter because there are gonna be no pilots to fly them!

Seriously though.... If you think you wanna do it get your ass down to a recruiter and give it a try. There has been no better time in recent memory that I can think of to give it a shot. What's the worst that happens? You get picked up and get to realize why all those of us who did the Air Force thing got completely sick of it?

But everything is great because people have had all their computer based training on: how to use fire extinguishers, how not to rape other people, how not to have a sex slave, not spying for WikiLeaks, how to not rape people with fire extinguishers, how not to commit suicide, how not to rape your sex slave and other highly enlightened topics. I was recently excited to peruse the Foreign Clearance Guide (a book on what to do/not to do in other countries) that they have added a special section on LGBTQ issues. I guess it's handy for those folks who have the situational awareness off a turnip who don't realize a lot of the ****hole countries we have the misfortune of operating in don't take kindly to a lot of stuff due to being third world ****holes.Ironically enough most of them seem to be totally ok with rape of all varieties which is one of the things our computer based training says isn't ok.

 

I was under the impression you don't know if you'll be accepted for flight school when you sign up and once you've signed you're in. You may be stuck with a job that has nothing to do with flying. Is that not the case?

 

Or, you could go to flight school and wash out...then be stuck as some kind of liason to the commissary and spend the next four years stacking Alpo for the retirees' dogs.

If you make it through SUPT and track to fighter/bomber, and you don't get a bomber, good luck being a 30+ year old Second Lieutenant and making it through IFF/LIFT where getting $h!t faced every night and waking up at 5am to brief a BFM sortie is just a part of the job. Your body will just love that!

The AF may need more pilots, but I really doubt they are looking for old dudes to fill their ranks...seriously. There are still plenty of smart, motivated young college grads that will be lining up to go. And the 28 year old Captain flight leads and instructors aren't going to be all excited about babysitting mid-30s year old wingmen through their first tours while those wingmen tend to their wife, kid, church, hemorrhoid and whatever issues that will make most of them second rate choices.

My imagination just runs rampant [sic] with all the problems with opening the doors wide to folks who chose to do all kinds of other things with the years that matter most to a fighter pilot rather than actually becoming a fighter pilot. For most of us, becoming a fighter pilot was the only thing we wanted to do since we were kids and doing anything else was barely a second thought. For me there was no second choice. As for guys flying after tours in other career fields, most that I knew wanted to be pilots first. They just couldn't get a flight school slot for one reason or another. Most were still pretty young...very junior Captains or First Lieutenants.

All that said, motivation can make up for a lot. If you want it bad enough, go make it happen!

 

I've tried with no luck earlier this year before turning 31. I have two years left in my residency program and told them I'd still be willing to work as a radiologist for the AF in some form as all I'll need is a workstation to read exams remotely. No interest in having a family of my own. No luck... Probably easier I just get a private practice job in a few years and buy my own plane like other docs do.

 

Drone pilots also....don't think they have the same physical requirements that actual flying pilots have...

"It's no secret that the US Air Force is doing everything it can to recruit and keep drone pilots, and now it's resorting to a very direct solution: cold, hard cash. The military branch is offering $10,000 more per year in bonuses to those pilots who renew their active duty commitment for 5 years. They were already getting a hefty $25,000 extra per year, but this is a huge incentive -- if a pilot is active for the full term, that's a total of $175,000 above and beyond their usual pay.
It's a lot to offer, but it may be necessary. The USAF is increasingly relying on drones as part of its operations, and its training has suffered in recent years due to stretched resources. While the Air Force is doubling the number of pilots it produces between its 2015 and 2017 fiscal years, it's not going to take any chances with losing those crews that are already here. That's especially true when airlines are aggressively luring pilots with the promises of greater pay. It's too soon to say if larger bonuses will work, but the odds are that there will be at least some drone operators who'll stay on when they would have otherwise bowed out."

 

USAF is graduating the first class of NCO RPA pilots as we speak and is actively recruiting more of them from the RPA NCO corps of maintainers and console technicians. Initially only for the RQ-4 Global Hawk since they still prefer to have officers in charge of weapons employment missions.