pcola

Diversity in the military: Anything else is for snaps.

My understanding is that furloughed pilots can turn down a recall and maintain furlough status. I'm no airline guy, so there is a high degree of likeliness that I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I heard it recently from a 14 year Delta guy. He said its not all that uncommon that a furloughed guy will have a better gig, so they may want to defer their return from furlough for as long as the airline will allow. This could account for the airlines that are hiring, yet still have furloughed pilots on the books.

An evening with himself, I'm guessing.

WTF??? Problem solved. Edit to fix attachment

Warning: If you watch the video M2 posted above, you will grow 4 minutes and 28 seconds older with absolutely nothing to show for it (unless you follow through on your inevitable urge to slit your wrists half way through.)

I'm just a lowly Flt/CC, but in my little kingdom, your worthless Masters degree has 0 bearing on my Flight rankings. Unless you are shirking other responsibilities to do that Masters, at which point you can find yourself in the bottom third. If you are doing it and still the best FP in the flight, good on you. At my level though, with ~15 Lts and Jr Capts in the flight, I haven't ever seen a need to use a Bac+ or Masters as a "tie breaker."

And your career won't be in jeopardy. Fail a checkride...clean it up and move on and it can be buried. Fail a PT test, you're off the strat list and it continues to haunt you every time the Wg/CC looks at your record before signing your OPR. How f'd up is that?

WTF, Hoss? What I said was: Are you pulling a media stunt and selectively quoting to strengthen your argument? Of course 75% aren't DGs/Execs, but at my base, in my unit, the only guy I know of to get a DP without an AAD had those qualifiers.

It's the "Promoted to Major w/P and w/o AAD" = 35% number that worries most people. The problem is that more often than not, the Sq-Wg CCs allocate strats at least in part based upon AAD completion. They look again at AAD degree completion when allocating DPs, and can even disregard previous strats to give the last DP to someone lower on the strat list if he has is AAD but the person above him does not. Witnessed it. So, how it really breaks down, is that if you aren't working on your AAD early, you miss early opportunities to get on the strat list. Then, if you don't have it done when they are handing out the DPs, that will likely put you into that bottom 25%, which then puts you into the P and no AAD category. The moral is that if you don't have your AAD at least 6-9 months before your board, at most Wings, you'd better have some strong contributors (UPT/SOS DG, OG/Wg exec w/the strats that go with it) if you hope to get a DP. It can be done but not the path I'd necessarily recommend to the young'ns.

I actually laughed at that one.

So, what's that, like 5 dudes? What, we should keep burning millions on TA so that 5 dudes don't get screwed? Kind of like banning "Christmas" from schools so as not to offend the few non-Christians...

First, I highly doubt the "Lt Mafia" specified by VSU and whom I was targeting were running a petition for the benefit of the E's getting degrees. But to answer your question directly: what about them? I was enlisted in the Navy in the mid 90s before commissioning. I don't think we even had TA, because I never heard about it, and if we did, I'm sure it wasn't 100%. You know what I did? Used the many other financing options available to a veteran: GI bill, IL veterans grant, Pell grants, MAP grants, etc. Where there's a will, there's a way, and in a climate of "belt tightening and fat trimming" this is a clean kill. The TA program had morphed into a cash cow for "military friendly" for profit institutions. Good riddance. If you are pursuing a degree that is genuinely useful and will help you to advance your post AF career, you are not likely to let the lack of TA stop you; as I mentioned, there are many avenues. On the other hand, if your only goal in getting your TA funded degree is to attain a promotion metric, well, you may not be quite as likely to burn your other benefits, which is my exact definition of "trimming fat."

Wait, so the Lt Mafia at your base are such gluttons for punishment that they are actually begging to reinstate the principle driving force behind the "unofficial" Masters requirement? Presumably out of fear of being left behind? Tell them to look around. If they aren't funded to complete their useless Masters, nobody else is either. WTF is wrong with the AF today? Ugh.

That autobiography is my inspiration...henceforth. Thanks for sharing!

This is not true. Do not take this bad advice. The last thing you want to do is burn bridges at you new "old" unit. The best way to get hired by a better unit is to start a facebook page to market your abilities. Post the link here. If you were good enough to get hired by a heavy unit, and you can put your quals on a facebook page and get it out there, the fighter units will be banging down your door to get you to cross over. This forum is a really good avenue for that kind of self promotion. Nobody's going to get you hired but you!

Looks like the sky has fallen...

This. Standard deployment dec for E8/9, O5/6. The V is the distinction of note.

Leave the 6 yrs. Jr CGOs shouldn't have to worry about a Masters degree prior to 6 years anyway. IMO, cutting TA is the one thing they've gotten right in this sequestration debacle (and no, it doesn't effect me - got my degree w/out TA.)

I personally have worked for a CC with little experience and no credibility in the jet (senior pilot wings with less hours than most FPs was the first indicator, always on the NMR list was the clincher.) This person compensated for their lack of competence in the jet by emphasizing the queep. "Lets rework the entire Sq organizational structure. Let's rework the actual physical layout of the Sq. Let's develop this... Let's develop that... I want one of these over here and somebody come up with a better way to do this...blah blah blah." The "bright ideas" were endless, but it was always somebody else's job to execute. Never any focus on ops or improving anything to do with the flight line. This, IMHO, is the danger of having an Ops Sq/CC who's emphasis is not on flying.

Some of the comments on that article are great: "Warning shot? Ain't nobody got time for that!"

Does that mean you can scratch your face, too?

My unit does the same...sends prior IPs to the schoolhouse for IP upgrade. But usually for a lack of sim time and/or flying hours to run an in-house IP program, not for a lack of instructors. Plus, we can get a guy back from the schoolhouse, upgraded, in a month. Takes several months to do it in-house (for the above reasons.) I do know that shutting down FTUs for IP upgrades will absolutely not be able to be absorbed in house at most, if not all, units. Not enough flying hours for currency training as-is.

you have no idea what you're talking about.

By faster, I just meant that we fly a tad faster than you guys, and the M (I fly the B) does it with even fewer fuel stops. No, TACC does not "hook us up." Fred does that. We don't get abused as much because we break. We aren't usually pounding the ramp, we are in Charlie waiting on you guys to bring in our MRT, or waiting on space to open up in the fuel barn, or troubleshooting, etc. Yes, we break alot, and thankfully, somebody with vision decided to make our repair capable facilities Ramstein, Rota, and Hickam (amongst others, but we tend to spend the most time there.) This is not a bad thing. About the 2 days a month in Afghanistan, I meant that we typically fly one trip a month, and on that trip fly into Afg, drop our cargo, and continue back to our repair capable facility. So, instead of deploying and flying in and out every other day, we get the same tax break by spending 1-2 days a month in country. The C-17 has some cool capabilities. Other than AR, the C-5 pretty much flies one to a full stop everywhere, but offers a much better lifestyle and paycheck, hands down. The choice is yours.

Not at all. Do your shit, get your degree, go to School, hell, even get all the DGs you can. But don't sell yourself for "the man." Dont waste my parents' tax money on a useless degree, spend some effort on one that will improve you. Don't gun for that SOS DG at the expense of all your bros. And don't escalate what we all see as the problem. How did the Masters degree, or PME by correspondence before in-residence become a requirement in the first place? Because that's what your competition did. So why on earth would someone attempt to make this whole shit show even worse by leading the wave to create yet another unofficial, competition driven requirement? Don't do it. If you do, don't complain about how stupid it is because you ARE the problem. But we all know that's not really the case.