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You guys are missing the point. Nobody is gonna take a paycut to live in DLF. You want those lifers in the sim building to run the flightline? Half can't pass a medical. But you go right ahead. Look, you're not gonna get any takers to come down here to District 12. You're gonna have to incentivize the $$$ in ways that make civilians a non-starter. Once you hit AGR levels of equivalent hard/soft compensation, it's not worth it to the DOD to pay a civilian that. This isn't new. They already tried to make us all ARTs down here. Didn't go anywhere. And I mean nowhere, dead in the water full stop. It was amazing to see how they even had to carve us out DLFers from the conversion. Never seen management have to be so transparent about a concession in my 12 years in this gig. You guys know the muckity mucks are going back to an ART-to-AGR retrofit with tail between their legs right now, right? 55% system-wide manning on the ART side alone. They can't staff it in GOOD locations, let alone the UPT shitholes. This whole thread is moot already. And you guys think the P-cola model of having non-ART/straight-GS GS-12 flying T-1s is gonna get traction in UPT shitholes? LOL Hell, there was a huge exodus in P-cola precisely because they wouldn't give those guys GS-13 with the SSR, only the most hardcore "live in FL over anything" townies remained. And moving UPT on a piecemeal basis to good locations in order to normalize for the inability to pay civilians AGR money and benefits? ROFL. Your god-damned chief of staff is actively lobbying for the regional industry just so he doesn't have to address servicemember non-monetary QOL drivers, and you guys think the DOD is gonna have the impetus to make basing changes? Holy shit you guys are hitting the Petrovskaya a bit hard and early on this one. Good AFSO-21 topic though. Good luck.

Back to the main theme of the thread, you are getting distracted, and that plays to their hand. Bottomline, Fingers listened to the problems (like Boomer before him), and decided it was easier to go around the identified problems and ask Congress to take action to make every pilot less marketable. A big GIANT FU to those that serve. I will not address the issues that make you want to leave, I will simply ignore your complaints and take external actions that will make it harder for you to find a job on the outside. Anyone else want to vomit at the hypocrisy? It was the same thing from a former MAJCOM/CC, a guy I used to respect, who said "they will stay out of patriotism and if they don't we will just make more" Good luck with that one...of course he was a Nav.

This...all of this! The passengers have better access to updated weather than we do. It's just too dangerous for us to have the moving map and streaming weather on our tablet... Wifi in the cabin, OK. Wifi in in the cockpit...FAA loses their minds. Now you want to change from the surface 2 to the surface 3...Whoa boys, just slow the fuck down!

A 737-800 crashes with 180 people onboard. It was being flown single-pilot. The NTSB determines that having a second pilot onboard would have probably prevented the crash. How many hundreds of millions of dollars will this cost the company in lawsuits, settlements, insurance payouts, stock value, loss of the airframe, etc...? ------ A 99.99% safety rate means Delta Airlines (mainline only) crashes a plane every 4-5 days. If airlines are going to change to single- or no-pilot cockpits, the safety factor will need to be perfect. Not "as good as a Global Hawk".

Disagree; cyber security is a massive concern, and the threats are only getting worse as more of our shit is connected to some kind of network (even if only occasionally). But, can't have any meaningful discussion on this topic via Al Gore's internet.

Wait, what?

I'm trying to envision single pilot ops on a snowy day with deicing operations in LGA taxing out in the conga line waiting for takeoff and needing to do a wing inspection as you hit the end of your holdover time for the anti-ice as ground is giving taxi instructions from hell stacking up jets all over the airfield. Wouldn't want to be in the middle of that but I'd pay money to listen in on the radio and watch. That would be some quality entertainment right there.

To devils advocate a bit...the va appraisal is really there to protect YOU. Are you sure you aren't getting screwed by your builder?

(whispered tone) FA #1 to #2: "Janet, would you please tell the captain the intercom is stuck in hot mic!!!"

I actually think it is pretty complicated. How do you ensure the CAT III systems are always available? And if they're not, do you divert and land immediately? For me, it's not always working, either at dispatch or enroute/on approach for various reasons. Granted, CAT II is usually available and can autoland without the redundancy of CAT III systems but my point is that shit breaks, and not just automated systems. We fly without ACARS from time to time because some 'tron somewhere ain't firing right. Or it stops working in flight. Nothing works all the time and everything breaks at inopportune times, and when it's a system you need to ensure 200 people get back on the ground safely, it's a problem. Do you now require a flight to land asap if a system fails in flight just in case the pilot becomes incapacitated and then the jet can't land itself? Seems like there'd be a lot less on time arrivals just knowing how things break in real life. Will aircraft be capable of single pilot ops if everything is working in the near future? Yes, probably soon. It's the "what ifs" and implications of shit breaking in those rare circumstances that push it way out into the future for passenger aircraft IMO.

Whoa!... slow down, Trigger. Not every airline is allowed to have wifi enabled in the cockpit. Let's not get too crazy here.

Sure, as long as they're retired military pilots.

A few words of caution. First, never believe the buy/hold/sell ratings from banks, they don't actually mean buy or hold or sell. I suggest reading this for a quick explanation of how sell-side equity research works: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-20/wall-street-analysts-give-investors-what-they-want Second a stock split cannot change the value of a company. If you think AMZN is a good value after the stock splits it is an equally good value today. 477M shares at $845 gives a market cap of $403B, if they split 2-for-1 you have 954M shares at $422.50 which is still a $403B market cap. On a stock specific note I disagree with your assessment of Amazon. The retail business has negative working capital so when it was growing rapidly they could reinvest that float into other business areas. As that growth slows they lose that excess cash for investment. With the exception of cloud services they continue to invest in low margin or no margin businesses that don't earn an ROIC above their cost of capital. Growth without profitability is value destructive. Groceries are a terrible business, the music and video offerings have escalating costs and Amazon has no competitive advantage in either of them. Nobody is making money in the restaurant take-out business. At 172x P/E (think of a bond with a 0.58% interest rate and no guaranteed payout), 3x Sales and 34x EV/EBITDA you are betting everything on profitability 10+ years in the future. Maybe you'll be right but there are many other, lower-risk options out there in my opinion.

How are those stocks currently valued? My experience has been that companies with great future potential already have that expected growth factored into their value. I'm less interested in buying into a well-run company at any cost than I am at buying a well-run company for cheap. While that seems rather obvious, how do you calculate "cheap"? Or does that not matter as much considering the other variables?

FIFY

You asked so, yeah, you're out of line here. Comm officers don't do the same work (danger/personal risk//length/duration/intensity of training) but they also don't get flight pay or the bonus opportunities you have. Does current flight pay/bonus structure cover the value difference of the two jobs? No, I don't think so. But I also don't feel the need to undercut the value position of a career field that I think is dangerously undervalued in terms of emerging threat horizon either. Our position stands on its own merits. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

Good. I got answers to all your questions except the stupid ones, but rest assured I asked them all. I'll write up the interview for Combat Aircraft magazine and post a link to it here when it's out.

You guys write so many words. The art of brevity is lost on all millennials. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So crew chief may be beyond what they do. However, they do a lot of leg work to help out where units are suffering. Honestly though they do a shit ton more work than I ever did as a casual for nine months. I checked in a few times a week and that was the end of it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Calling casual Lts "crew chiefs" because they're helping out with some relatively basic flightline tasks is profoundly disrespectful to some of the hardest working people in the Air Force.