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Do not take the bonus if you are a pilot.

Concur, and this point cannot be overemphasized. The traditional pax-carrier thinking is turned on its head with FedEx. You DO NOT need to live in domicile with FedEx. Many front side / back side DHs to begin and end your work week. And if not, a quick JS into Memphis only 2-3 hrs before the trip showtime is the other possibility. For me and mine, the hellish option would be to move to Memphis and raise my kids here. Absolutely not. Not attempting to piss in anyone else’s Cheerios with where they’ve chosen to live. Without going into graphic detail, it’s simply not an option for my family. I’m glad to hear that guys senior to me love the out’n’backs...take every single one of them. Most of my months I only see Memphis for a quick day hub turn or (most likely) not at all. I declined a Delta interview once I was hired at FedEx. I already knew that my hatred toward the flying public would outweigh any wining / dining that Atlanta could entice me with during the interview process. I know that the Big D is fantastic for many guys...and again, more power to them. My family’s correct pick has nothing to do with any other family’s correct path. Another FDX plug...20+ years ago, the cargo pilot was looked upon as a second class citizen who couldn’t get hired as a “real” airline pilot. Anyone who has carnal knowledge of today’s schedules work at FDX has a hearty laugh at this. As a wide body FO since day 1, my half a month of “work” includes choosing which catering will be delivered and making sure my PJs are clean (enough) for my next nap, which will consist of precisely 1/3 of the enroute cruise time. The only time I’m required to show my face on the “other” side of the airport is when I’m in business casual civvies, getting paid block hours to DH in first class. It’s just stupid. I’ll say again, I’m very happy that the pax world (or moving to Memphis) is the perfect pick for many of us. But the cargo world does offer an entirely other job IMO. Airplanes are involved in both, but that’s where the similarities end. FedEx specifically has so many flavors of schedule (NB, WB, pure domestic, mixed domestic/intl, pure intl, nights, days) that are available from day 1, each FDXer has a different trash/treasure to seek...FROM DAY 1. We don’t have to wait for 5-10-15 yrs before sampling the WB pay, and certainly not before sampling the paid longer intl layover. We are not Part 117, which I’m discovering is a beautiful thing. I personally wouldn’t be happy as a pax guy. I speak only for myself. Hiring data point for consideration: I’m at 85% at the company after 1.5 yrs on property.

I left the MAF “mentoring” and assignments page. The only website where their is more fellatio is probably p0rnhub...

Weird. I thought that normally tracked you to Eagles...

What’s your background? It can be pretty decent in the hands of someone with a bit of experience. From my personal collection and the only time I’ve been fortunate enough to fight an Eagle WVR.

Seriously -- single-pilot or autonomous ops at the cargo carriers aren't going to be the order of the day in the career-span of anyone currently reading this forum who is in a position to get hired in the next half dozen years. FedEx won't even spend the money to make sure the A300 FMS has the memory and processing power to operate in the full RNP/RNAV environment, instead opting to delete points out of the database that are at airports not served by the A300. So I don't see them jumping on a technology that isn't cheaper than just paying a regular old pilot to do the work. As soon as FAA-approved autonomous technology (and all the associated satellite time, system mx, reliability, etc) is a dollar cheaper than a pilot...well, then, count on it being the order of the day. But it isn't. Just look at how slow the FAA is to approve nearly *anything* technology related. Look at how advanced the avionics are that the experimental world has, and how nearly none of that is getting certification at anything other than a snail's pace, if at all. Go back and look at the archives of FlightInfo.com or APC and you'll see exactly the same fear-mongering in the mid-late 90s, and people saying cargo pilots were gonna be out of a job in 10 years. Those predictions aren't aging particularly well.

I’ll be looking at the jump to airline world in two years. Only long term concern about FedEx/UPS is the move to unmanned ops. Im thinking long term here over the course of a 30 year career. That concern alone makes pax more appealing in my mind.

You're going to get crickets because it shows the Republican released memo was a fabrication. The central point of the memo was that the FBI didn't tell the FISA court about Steele's political motives, when in fact the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. When Rubio backs the FISA warrant, then it's abundantly clear Nunez is full of shit and was just trying to disrupt the investigation.

This is no joke. Mobility is a key part of that. Recent large scale exercise took international senior leaders though the concept of employing the one thing that the US can do that no-one else can match: global mobility married to global strike. Put lots mobility assets loaded with max grunt in a part of the A2AD where bad guys aren't expecting it, and you've got a whole new ball game. The world knows we can do this. No one can match it. If you think you can be a passive part of the mobility team and still meet those expectations, think again. The USAF mobility world needs to embrace empowered leadership, and the line guys need to step up their proactivity. The first few sentences of the video below describes EXACTLY what I hear when someone spouts off passive crap like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmdLcyES_Q

There’s a tanker squadron actually doing a lot of that right now. No more exec shop. Extra civ in CSS and 4 new contractors for scheduling, training and Stan/Eval. Flight commanders are responsible for their people and put them up for awards if they’ve earned them. 1206s are only written for those who get pushed out of squadron. Half of the squadron building is being converted to classified space. Interested to see if the flyers flock to the vault now with this new found time and freedom. I suspect the cultural change will have to be supported by more than just one rogue commander. Otherwise, it’ll always die after the Change of Command. It’s much easier for outsiders to come in and assume the tanker crew members are too dumb and lazy to care about combat airpower and to reinstitute the culture of “make it happen” and low expectations (i.e. just get your beans done). Turns out both assumptions are wildly incorrect and to the detriment of the entire strike package. The more situationally aware and knowledgeable of the various mission sets tankers are, the more effective the force as a whole. Not sure I follow why we have to reject “professional development” in your vision (e.g. Safety school, AIS, Professional flying organization involvement, etc). Professional development comes in many forms and can absolutely make you a better officer/aviator. Maybe you’re talking about PME? No need to try to convince me PME is broken—100% agree. Oh...and agreed...volunteering should be 100% personal choice and not reportable to the AF in any fashion...including awards.

...said no Southwest pilot ever. I keed I keed. Kinda.

You cut out the queep at home. All of it. No more burger burns. No more fundraising of any sort. No more booster club. No one in the squadron hears about an award or medal unless they’ve won it, as determined solely by the CC. No one is ever informed about a volunteer or “professional development” opportunity. Hire civilians; one per shop can basically handle all of the admin in Training, Mobility, Stan/Eval, and Scheduling. Certify the largest office space in the building as a vault, make Comm give you some SIPR laptops. If there’s only one entrance and no windows, go for open storage. Ask the Wing to force the Comm/Sq to do the work for you. Tell the NAF or MAJCOM when they don’t. The Sq/CC takes stands like that because he’d rather tell the boss “no” than look like a pussy in front of his guys on the line. The guys on the line create that culture. The current push-pull for your time is “Flying vs Queep vs Deploy vs Personal.” It could be “Proficiency Flying vs Improving Mission vs Deploy vs Personal,” and that’s solely up to your community.

That is the kind of perception bred throughout the MAF (actually, most of the AF) by doing COIN in a (mostly) permissive environment for all of our careers. Trump and Mattis have made it abundantly clear that we better be getting ready for Russian/China/North Korea. We can have a conversation about what that means - like whether the current infatuation with AERPS gear is appropriate or not. But IADS is a thing that the MAF is going to have to contend with in lots of ways, not just the SA-69 MRIR. If you guys haven't read the NDS you should. https://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf Here's an excerpt from the NSS. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf The United States must retain overmatch— the combination of capabilities in sufficient scale to prevent enemy success and to ensure that America’s sons and daughters will never be in a fair fight. Overmatch strengthens our diplomacy and permits us to shape the international environment to protect our interests. To retain military overmatch the United States must restore our ability to produce innovative capabilities, restore the readiness of our forces for major war, and grow the size of the force so that it is capable of operating at sufficient scale and for ample duration to win across a range of scenarios. We must convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them—not just punish them if they attack the United States. We must ensure the ability to deter potential enemies by denial, convincing them that they cannot accomplish objectives through the use of force or other forms of aggression. We need our allies to do the same—to modernize, acquire necessary capabilities, improve readiness, expand the size of their forces, and affirm the political will to win.

I still don't see how a flying only track is a good idea. Imagine 'that guy' in the squadron that is always the pigeon and would rather work on his BS masters than study in the vault. He always has excuses as to why he didn't make RAP or why he was unavailable for mission planning yesterday. You really want him to be your commander in a few years? I totally get that guys just want to fly and I'm in that boat as well, but the guy who just wants to fly is also probably the guy that has the personality to take care of their bros and wants to be leading the formation when the shit hits the fan. That is the guy that should be set up to be the squadron commander. Rather than set up a fly-only track, which will remove guys like this from being commanders, we need to fix the glitch. Remove the BS AAD, SOS, ACSC, and things like that from consideration. Go back to the way the military has promoted since the Revolutionary War. Promote the guys who seem the be the most capable and chances are, they will be the most capable in their new job as well. Don't promote based on who has a shot at being the next chief of staff, promote based on who is the most likely to do the job best on the next level. Then, when that is finished, fix the staff gigs to turn them from a terrible deal into a good deal. Make them 18-24 month assignments in Hawaii where you work 9-3. People will say this is impossible, but I bet that so much of the staff has become a self-licking ice cream cone that if you removed some of the same BS where guys spend half their time filling out electronic staff summary sheets, you might find some time to let guys go hang out at the beach with their family when their kids get out of school every afternoon. Suddenly a year or two away from the jet might be a nice break instead of a prison term.

Banned... again. I can ban him faster than he can start them. It’s a war of attrition. Takes 15 mins to open an account here and 3 seconds for me to ban him. I just wished he would be more original and offer some new humor for you folks on here.

Tricare standard. Go where you want. When you want. No permission. No referrals. Just like champus for those of us that grew up with it. You pay 20%. $3k max out of pocket for the year for the family. A similar plan at delta is $700/month with $13k family max. Thats almost half a trip per month I dont Have to work for healthcare. Yes. 20 years is worth it.

Well considering you have apparently no interest in coming prepared to a real conflict based on yours and other’s statements on here, I would expect you to continue to be a puppet because the people do come prepared aren’t going to have the time to wait for you to get back in the vault to get smart on stuff you should know as a military aviator. We fight the same mentality in the C-17 world. “I don’t have RWR so why do I care about SAM threats? I can’t do anything about them.” It’s a false assumption and a willful lack of critical thinking.

You should give that speech to FSS too

We probably need a KC-46 first.

Not bad considering I’m making about the same but missing kids’ birthdays, wife’s birthday, anniversary, and the entire summer with the kids while deployed. Choices are good, I’m looking forward to having some.

There may not be an equivalent lucrative civilian job, but there's an equivalent lucrative military job called the Reserve and the Guard... And they were already paying a $35K/year AGR/ART bonus on 1-3 year contracts. The SecAF/CSAF messaging is what it is, and bomber WSO manning is not in the shithole fighter pilot manning is at, but it ain't pretty either. And while I absolutely could get behind a $60K pilot bonus, look at it from my perspective: My last year on active duty I ran the OSS Nuke shop through an NSI, STRATCOM Global Thunder exercise, and multiple nuke WSEPs, while also deploying to the Deid to run the OIR MPC. Obviously I cannot land the airplane or tell my A-Code what to do... But I can, and have (operationally), told two BUFF crews and two Mudhen crews what to do as a mission commander, and part of my job is train PILOTS (and WSOs and EWOs) to be mission commanders and mission leads etc etc. So why would I stay on active duty to make $60K less than my year group peer, mouth-breathing Major Chucklenuts with 50% fewer LOX quals who is at the gym by 3 and home by 5 every day, because he puts his right hand on eight throttles instead of one TGP track handle? [As it happens, I punched to the Reserves without that $60K differential... And I highly leaving active duty to anyone who's thinking about it.] Bottom line: In multi-specialty aircraft, especially those where CSOs perform much of the mission itself and manage/lead/instruct across specialties, you are going to have a significant brain drain to the Guard and Reserve if you make the differential between Pilot and CSO pay just downright insulting. Obviously market economics (airlines) are going to favor pilots, but us non-pilots can only put up with so much when Big Blue is fucking all of us in the ass and only has enough common decency to give the pilots a reach-around—and there's a ready escape mechanism to a better lifestyle.

This all sounds great and you could bet your ass if we were allowed to run the show in the AOR like you portray, we'd be all over it, but in the grand scheme of things, we've been Kingpin/CAOC's puppet for the last almost two decades because some dude sitting in a building with 3 foot thick concrete walls and no windows thinks he knows how to run shit better than we do. The last time I did WTF I wanted was when I heard a pair of Vipers 10 min from bingo over the Med during OUP waiting for a French controller in a NATO AWACS to approve our transit to their area. By the time the controller got back to us with an approval, we had already .85'd it over there, got them on the boom and they were off to their targets shortly there after. Of course then there's the issue with what freq is everyone on? This is not the info that we need to be searching for in the jet. That info isn't going to be handed to us by the planners who are dealing with 40 sorties a day so it all goes back up to the top. Why do we need to be on the "right freq"? We're not allowed to run the show and do whatever we want when the AOR is run like an ARTCC. So we sit there and orbit and wait for our ARCT like we are expected to because ultimately, as mundane as that seems, that's the responsibility we've been given. Hey, we get paid the same either way. Maybe in a real conflict, things would be different, but this crackpipe fantasy that tanker dudes are going to cowboy it around the AOR because they thought they heard some shit go down on some JTAC freq and decided to "insert" themselves is bullshit. Getting fuel to the fight has been much more bureaucratic than you think it is.

You don't have any chance and I hope for your own sake you didn't even apply and embarrass yourself.