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Bergman, Are you suggesting that reserve component crew members that have to maintain the exact same Vol 1 currencies and requirements as their active duty counterparts get paid the SAME AMOUNT of flight pay per month? Now that's crazy talk right there mister.

I'm gonna use the extra $50/month to pay for Emerald Coast. Thanks Air Force!

I was curious whether Google Translate would be able to detect this incoherent smattering of words as English. I'll be damned, it did.

First scoping questions: Are you staying where you retire? What is the market there for employment, either working for someone or for yourself? If moving, to where and same questions. Have you determined your absolute mins for income/lifestyle? Been out for 9 years now (finished out as an AGR), did defense contracting and now GS. Original plan was for wife (retired within 6 months of me) and I to run a B&B in Sedona. Turn-key place, year 'round 85% occupancy rate. Unfortunately, I was in DC and had A) kid in #1 high school in nation (Thomas Jefferson) and B) retired at the height of the housing market crash. Was over $100K upside down on my DC house and couldn't afford to walk from that AND pick up the business loan on the place in Sedona. So...switch to back-up plans to pay bills. Wound up staying in DC area for another four years. Ugh... Escaped to Omaha and now Nellis. Started out as a contractor for Boeing; switched to GS for salary and security. For profit, except for working for myself, wasn't attractive since the lay-off factor was high then as well as capricious now. I'm all about capitalism but the realities of being fired/laid off for reasons beyond my control, i.e., I'm canned not because I didn't do a good job but just because (like most people do, I realize) wasn't working for me after 20 years of a guaranteed paycheck. Basically, I consider(ed) myself institutionalized. Being stuck in DC made that an easy mode to enter. GS in agencies other than DoD, in my experience, sucks. No sense of mission, no sense of team, nothing but "I got mine." Especially nothing about the taxpayer. Don't get me wrong, I saw unbelievable waste and "I got mine" in DoD as well and it frustrates(d) me. But there was still that core of dudes/dudettes that care about the mission despite the Man. Unfortunately, for fifteen years I was at Air Staff or above levels. Empire building and not making waves are the currencies there so I wasn't happy nor considered a team player. I'm now at the squadron/base level and enjoy it much more. Even if the folks in uniform, as a rule, dismiss civilians, being a part, however small, of making the mission happen is rewarding. edited to add: Not meaning to derail the thread. Wanted to give one perspective on defense contracting and GS route as an alternative to a guy who is able to go airline and is asking for alternatives. I could not (without spending a metric sh1t-ton of money and time I didn't have to get my quals).

The AFI is subordinate to the JTR. Unfortunately (in this case) we've spent a lot of years telling the AF it has to pay us IAW JTR because AFI was not in our favor and the JTR trumped AFI. Now the roles are flipped. As much as possible, don't land on bases when you go XC.

Yea, and with the news that we're making another push in afghanistan, there's no flipping way that deployed billets or ops tempo will go away.. I imagine all those suggestions we made for reducing deployments just got flushed. On a different and likely highly unpopular note, I know this forum is largely full of disgruntled types and we all come here to b1tch about what's wrong.. but some of you guys may need to step back and think about something positive in your life. :D We all just got an unscheduled pay bump and anyone but the most deluded dunce would know it wasn't going to be significant.. There's really no reason to piss and moan about it, IMO. The NDAA was signed.. even if CSAF wanted to give us a million each, he's still tied by the budget. Given the facts, I would say the only change I think I'd have made is to give earlier guys a larger bump (i.e., 6 yr guys would be much closer to 1k/mo) since those are the ones coming close to a decision point of get out/continue at 10 years. Otherwise, each of us with a decent flying record is still basically set for life, barring any long term economic meltdown, and we're doing what we love. I say all this as a guy who recently left one of the best flying locations in the AF for a "staff" job (in hopes of better promotion potential) that is quite pointless and borders on fraud, waste, and abuse and my 3yr old son lost one of his feet a few months ago.. Be thankful for the small things, they don't come often enough. Ok.. back to complaining about coffee that isn't strong enough, a/c isn't cold enough, and hotel housekeeping didn't leave a mint in the right spot on our pillows. :D

So there's got to be a better way to sell this bonus pay problem. Let's go with nice round numbers: to pay an extra $100k/year to 6900 pilots would cost a cool $690M. That's kind of a lot of money, but it's only about 0.69% of the Air Force's annual budget. Literally a drop in the bucket. Imperceptible. Budget dust. BUT! The non-flying officers and Chiefs would have a shit fit at the pay inequality ("No Comm No Bomb!", etc), and while they should be told, "When it costs $69M to produce a competent Finance Officer, I'll pay you more also," that doesn't work in the real world for troop morale. Those guys would be even more depressed and hate us even more. This has to be approached as a financial benefit. I paid extra to outfit my house with LED bulbs (experienced pilots) because in the long run I save money on the time and effort spent on buying way more incandescents (new pilots) and - most significantly - save a shit-ton of money on electricity (upgrade training). Pay $100k extra to keep your experienced pilots and save $Millions per pilot on backfill training for his/her replacement. For very simple math that only takes into account the cost of replacing your experienced guy with a new SNAP fresh from UPT, that 8 years worth of $100k bonus money would only pay for 69% of a new UPT grad. Add in the immeasurable costs of continuous upgrade training for that new guy, and the benefit is astronomical. Next consider the time lost by the experienced instructors to train new guys that could be used to refine TTPs - you get the picture. This shit is easy, but I feel like there's a glass ceiling WRT mil pay. Congress - and our own mil leaders - just can't stomach the idea of having rich military guys. I think it's a jealousy thing rather than a level-headed financial one.

No. At least guarantee O-4, if not O-5. No way O-3 pay, even into the 15-20 year mark, is enough to keep guys around. Even if you're just flying airplanes, the airlines will pay you more to do the same thing and work fewer days.

Truth. Air Force circa 1985-1990 sounds about right for starters. All airline talk aside, if the AF was serious about using money to aid retention, they would have doubled the previous aviator bonuses. $1000/mo increase would at least get people's attention. Edit to add: OBTW, give ARC guys the full flight pay whether they fly or not that month, just like AD. End this pro-rating the flight pay to a daily rate bullshit.

Make it more of a club than a fortune 500 company, you'd keep darn near everyone.

When will these freaking bean counters realize that throwing money at the problem isn't going to do squat? Thanks for the $50 pay raise, but it isn't stopping me from bailing for Delta/UA/AA etc with a $200+ potential. Do any of these "leaders" have the cajones to solve the deep rooted leadership problems in the Air Force? Some of the solutions and answers are complicated but some are easy fixes: separate promotion boards for rated, homesteading instead of PCSing every 3 years, pure flying track/eliminating up or out, get rid of 99% of the CBTs.