View Full Version : AF Pilot retention woes?
Who'd figured going woke and mandating experimental vaccine's would ever cause issues? Of course they are saying just for emergencies situations.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/single-pilot-c-130j-operations-being-explored-by-air-force
The U.S. Air Mobility Command is expanding the limited-aircrew employment concepts it has been exploring with aircraft like the KC-46 Pegasus to include the C-130J Super Hercules. The initial plan is to get select C-130J pilots and loadmasters trained on exactly how a flight utilizing only one of each would be executed, which will include the loadmaster helping the pilot fly the aircraft. All of this is part of an effort to prepare Mobility Air Forces for emergency scenarios where a threat or series of factors would require reduced crew operations.
Perhaps they should consider the flying warrant officers corp again?
Especially for tankers and transports
Perhaps they should consider the flying warrant officers corp again?
Especially for tankers and transports
The Navy and Marines had senior enlisted pilots before. So the concept ain't new.
The AF has had a pilot shortage since, well, forever. Maybe if they let them fly and not require them to take on all sorts of collateral duties and go to non-flying billets they would retain more.
The Navy and Marines had senior enlisted pilots before. So the concept ain't new.
The AF has had a pilot shortage since, well, forever. Maybe if they let them fly and not require them to take on all sorts of collateral duties and go to non-flying billets they would retain more.
Their flow thru program to Southwest Airlines is impressive! :D
The Navy and Marines had senior enlisted pilots before. So the concept ain't new.
The AF has had a pilot shortage since, well, forever. Maybe if they let them fly and not require them to take on all sorts of collateral duties and go to non-flying billets they would retain more.
I knew Marine Crew Chiefs for certain helicopters who would on occasion "take the stick" during long flights and get time in with the pilots. Quite a few of these guys would end up as Warrant Officers in the Army flying helicopters after their initial 6 years in the Marines
Averageman
03-10-23, 15:59
Warrant is the way to go. Only makes sense.
American just bumped salary up to the latest Delta union agreement rate, narrow body pilots top out at 475,000 wide body at 560,000. If you are a fighter jock I can see pulling a Maverick and staying in but keeping heavy pilots is going to be a lot tougher, not to mention all the BS they get thrown at them.
I agree Warrant and only require an Associate's Degree is the way to go, could even up the commitment to 8 years, go in at 20 get out at 28 and go to the airlines.
Averageman
03-10-23, 17:13
American just bumped salary up to the latest Delta union agreement rate, narrow body pilots top out at 475,000 wide body at 560,000. If you are a fighter jock I can see pulling a Maverick and staying in but keeping heavy pilots is going to be a lot tougher, not to mention all the BS they get thrown at them.
I agree Warrant and maybe only require an Associate's Degree.
If you can pass the course and do well at it, I would put the degree on hold until W-2.
American just bumped salary up to the latest Delta union agreement rate, narrow body pilots top out at 475,000 wide body at 560,000. If you are a fighter jock I can see pulling a Maverick and staying in but keeping heavy pilots is going to be a lot tougher, not to mention all the BS they get thrown at them.
I agree Warrant and only require an Associate's Degree is the way to go, could even up the commitment to 8 years, go in at 20 get out at 28 and go to the airlines.
I wouldn’t even require proof of graduation just 60 credit hours and done!
Not a military aviator, so "grain of salt" and all. It has never made sense to me to take pilots and stuff them behind desks. I get it IF a guy wants that track. If he doesn't then what? Warrant officer pilots could alleviate some of that. If a dude just wants to fly and gives zero shits about command it seems perfect.
Either way, it seems they need a technician/specialist pathway of some form or another. There are options to bump the head count. Offer more reserve options for pilots to stay current in their .mil seat while doing the family/commercial aviator gig.
Not a military aviator, so "grain of salt" and all. It has never made sense to me to take pilots and stuff them behind desks. I get it IF a guy wants that track. If he doesn't then what? Warrant officer pilots could alleviate some of that. If a dude just wants to fly and gives zero shits about command it seems perfect.
Either way, it seems they need a technician/specialist pathway of some form or another. There are options to bump the head count. Offer more reserve options for pilots to stay current in their .mil seat while doing the family/commercial aviator gig.
I think there should be two tracks in all the branches, warrants for those who just want to fly, and commissioned for those on the command track.
When the USAF had pilot retention issues back in the late 1980's they just gave them all leather A2 flight jackets. Seemed to work.
Hah good point, but what are they going to do this time, leather flying helmets or 50 mission crush hats?
I'm a probably a little biased because I'm pretty connected to this world, so take my thoughts with that in mind.
The AF did not lose a significant number of pilots over vaccine issues. I know a few guys made noise with some law suits, but by and large 95% of the force just got the shot and moved on. The single pilot stuff AMC is doing is all about trying to figure out how to generate sorties in a large scale conflict where losses are inevitable. The current Air Force is not built to lose crews--if things did pop off in the Pacific, we'd run out of pilots before we ran out of jets. I'm interested to see how it works out--I think the ideal solution would just be to make more pilots, but since we have caps on end strength that's not politically feasible right now so AMC is doing what they can without growth.
As to general retention, I really don't think enlisted or warrant pilots would solve anything. With flight pay and other incentives, the USAF can get a Captain pretty close to entry level airline pay. Even a W-4 is about 10k a year behind that, let alone looking at enlisted pay. Why would someone want all the responsibility of a Captain or Major with less money, AND stay in when the airlines or contract carriers are going to pay you more. It looks great on paper, but in practice I don't see it going anywhere, especially the AF is never going to get rid of officer pilots. It works for the Army because aviation is a more niche role for them, and they don't have a history of a massive commissioned pilot force. I know one of the guys who did the small group try out enlisted drone pilot thing, and he ended up going to OTS as an E-7 after it ended, and he echoed those sentiments....it doesn't feel awesome to have the same job responsibility as a Captain or a Major, get paid way less, and still have to deal with an AF enlisted promotion system that generally penalizes enlisted aircrew to the point you have a better chance of making E-9 as a crew chief than you do as any flyer.
The overall retention problem is a function of low manning. We have new guys taking forever to get through training because don't have enough UPT instructors to get them through initial training in a timely manner. Then Lt's get to a unit and get swamped with additional duties, and squadrons flounder because the AF is only manning high headquarters to 50-75%, so individual units are picking up the slack because there aren't enough desk jockeys at the MAJCOM HQs to effectively organize train and equip. When I was in a squadron I had to tell people that I still needed them to check email and work projects deployed, and I hated it, but we don't have the bodies for someone just to disappear because they're downrange. I think a dedicated technical track, like what the UK has with their "professional aviator" program where you don't promote but get pay increases commensurate to your experience, would be awesome, but I suspect that far too many people would take it and then we wouldn't have enough Majors and Lt Colonels to fill staff and leadership billets, or the ones you'd get would be the wrong people. Once upon a time USAF was big enough that if you didn't want to do the mandatory staff tours and "check the boxes" you could be an iron major in a squadron and just be a flyer, but now with blended retirement there is going to be less and less incentive for people to hang on just to get a 20 year retirement, which is going to make the gray haired old major with 6,000 hours even more a rare breed.
Funny things happen when the force structure is set up around having a lot of desks that 'need flying' and push out a lot of pretty capable pilots through that, stacked with kinda poor retention incentives. It really is all the non-flying related stuff that makes it hard, and the way that cascades into the ground crews is honestly worse. There are other ways to close up that pay gap, but those all involve caring and improving actual quality of life, both of which are things the DoD excels at doing terribly.
American just bumped salary up to the latest Delta union agreement rate, narrow body pilots top out at 475,000 wide body at 560,000. If you are a fighter jock I can see pulling a Maverick and staying in but keeping heavy pilots is going to be a lot tougher, not to mention all the BS they get thrown at them.
I agree Warrant and only require an Associate's Degree is the way to go, could even up the commitment to 8 years, go in at 20 get out at 28 and go to the airlines.
The current commitment after UPT for pilots is already 10 years. Going back to 8 like it was in the ‘80s would make the issue even worse.
So this is actually in my wheel house as I am an Air Force aviator who is about to leave active duty in 18 months. It isn’t just the money, though if you gave me 500K a year I might just consider it. I am tired of not being able to choose where I live, of spending 12 out of every 24 months away from home in literal third world countries, I am tired of people backstabbing each other so they can be better stratted, I am tired of the two-facedness, and I am honestly tired of the stress of every minor stupid thing not related to ops being treated as infinitely more important than it is. The next time someone runs up to me at the step desk saying I need to sign an OPR before stepping to the aircraft I am going to throw an Electronic Flight Bag at them.
You want to fix the retention issue you are going to have to improve the overall quality of life and reduce the queep. Get rid of the additional duties and give us the little things that make us feel human and cared for. Also stop putting our bases in communities that are horrible to live in and have horrible school districts. Quit removing the amenities on base and give us decent health care by not putting us in isolated communities where our families can’t be treated.
Averageman
03-13-23, 13:44
Something I noticed on the WO side of the house from years and years working in Armor.
When I came in Maintenance Warrant Officers were all former Enlisted. Usually these guys were high speed E-6's who took the challenge. To be honest, several times for these same guys it was an "Up or Out" decison.
So upon Graduation and with a couple of years experiance under their belts, these guys were a great asset to their Units.
But, here's the thing "Armor Officers" needed some of that hands on experiance working on a tank, just to know when they were not being BS'ed on issues. A lot of Comissioned Officers couldn't PMCS a Hummvee let alone a M1 Tank.
So being an Armor Guy, a Platoon Sergeant with a heavy maintenance background I made it my mission to train every Second Lieutenant I was issued how to do maintenance. I tried to explain, why they had to know, told them they would be XO's and Maintence Officers one day and thats why they needed to be there to conduct Q service. Some got it some didn't.
While turning the complete issue over to Warrants may be a solution, you still have to bring up Commisioned Officers the right way, so they know the real deal, soup to nuts about whats going on.
My time in the USAF was a while ago (1978-1998) and I was an enlisted Munitions troop. But the same issues largely existed back then (unrealistic APR/EPR/OPR system, crappy assignments, family issues, etc.). Some things don't ever seem to change.
bulldozer3
03-13-23, 13:50
The current commitment after UPT for pilots is already 10 years. Going back to 8 like it was in the ‘80s would make the issue even worse.
So this is actually in my wheel house as I am an Air Force aviator who is about to leave active duty in 18 months. It isn’t just the money, though if you gave me 500K a year I might just consider it. I am tired of not being able to choose where I live, of spending 12 out of every 24 months away from home in literal third world countries, I am tired of people backstabbing each other so they can be better stratted, I am tired of the two-facedness, and I am honestly tired of the stress of every minor stupid thing not related to ops being treated as infinitely more important than it is. The next time someone runs up to me at the step desk saying I need to sign an OPR before stepping to the aircraft I am going to throw an Electronic Flight Bag at them.
You want to fix the retention issue you are going to have to improve the overall quality of life and reduce the queep. Get rid of the additional duties and give us the little things that make us feel human and cared for. Also stop putting our bases in communities that are horrible to live in and have horrible school districts. Quit removing the amenities on base and give us decent health care by not putting us in isolated communities where our families can’t be treated.Same here, but on the Navy side. Bounced to the airlines 4.5 years ago. Stuck around flying in the reserves for the last 6, but quit that to last summer.
You will be infinitely more happy
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The current commitment after UPT for pilots is already 10 years. Going back to 8 like it was in the ‘80s would make the issue even worse.
So this is actually in my wheel house as I am an Air Force aviator who is about to leave active duty in 18 months. It isn’t just the money, though if you gave me 500K a year I might just consider it. I am tired of not being able to choose where I live, of spending 12 out of every 24 months away from home in literal third world countries, I am tired of people backstabbing each other so they can be better stratted, I am tired of the two-facedness, and I am honestly tired of the stress of every minor stupid thing not related to ops being treated as infinitely more important than it is. The next time someone runs up to me at the step desk saying I need to sign an OPR before stepping to the aircraft I am going to throw an Electronic Flight Bag at them.
You want to fix the retention issue you are going to have to improve the overall quality of life and reduce the queep. Get rid of the additional duties and give us the little things that make us feel human and cared for. Also stop putting our bases in communities that are horrible to live in and have horrible school districts. Quit removing the amenities on base and give us decent health care by not putting us in isolated communities where our families can’t be treated.
I have a friend who was a F15E pilot at Seymour Johnson in NC, left for pretty much the same reasons. The towns in which the AF chooses to put bases, yeah, always a head-scratcher to me.
To be fair, some of these issues are military-wide, not 'just' AF, and not 'just' aviation.
BrigandTwoFour
03-13-23, 14:16
Not a flyer, I was in the ICBM world and left in 2017.
From talking to my friends who are O-5s now, and a lot of friends who were on the aviation side and left for greener pastures, I sincerely think that the the whole service is suffering from a leadership and prioritization problem. It seems like practically every unit is understaffed and scrambling to meet just the basic mission requirements- yet there is no reduction of the "additional duty" side of the house for things that aren't mission essential.
I don't expect that to change, either, because of BH321 said. People are desperate to get ahead of their peers for competition in promotions. In the Air Force, at least, that means you need to win awards. How do you win awards? Well, you have to do a ton of additional crap that isn't actually being good at your job. Doing your job well is one or two bullets out of nine on a quarterly awards packet. So you gotta pump those numbers up with something. CGOA, booster club, motorcycle safety monitor, whatever.
If we were actually serious, then we'd recognize the staffing crunch and reduce responsibilities down to core essentials. Make a commitment to reward people for actual innovation in things like saving time, efficiency, and stuff that matters.
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