BFM this

Doubt it. The precedent would kill off safety privilege as we know it.

No, the irony is self contained within his username. We all got it with his first dozen posts or so. Welcome to bodn. The point that you make on the scope of trying to mass produce the price of a $59 product down to $4 is valid, however.

Congrats! No be sure you stay clean, don't miss your parole officer appointments, and don't come back!

Pancake, I'm actually rooting for you. I am. But I think that you're cherry picking your data a little; not surprising, this is your chosen path, and you are enthusiastic. But the question that you're failing to ask is: who is shaping this argument. Why are we seeing monthly pieces on the major news networks about the airline pilot sky falling? In a word: management. They are concerned about the following dominoes: 1) They want the reactionary Colgan legislation rolled back. They want to go back to the days of putting 22yo kids with 500t/50m in an RJ without the public paying any attention to the safety issues behind the curtain. 2) If they can pay those kids peanuts, then it becomes profitable to continue the scope fight. 3) Huge Profits! Management at the majors will continue the cycle of feast/famine/executive bonuses with the occasional strategic bankruptcy/merger in a longer term effort to raid previous contract agreements and marginalize groups like ALPA. They're winning the labor fight over the long term, we'll see short term gains in the next 10 years, but the 40year trend south will continue. And in my opinion, going back to deregulation, pilot groups had a chance to avoid a labor/mgt fight. 4) With more and more ATPs like myself sitting on the sidelines, we'll have more Regional Airline Association press releases calling for things like ab-initio programs and lifting age limits on ATPs altogether. That's what scares me. I really think that you're set up for a smooth ride to a left seat. But I think within 25 years, you'll be shocked that the pay for that position has gained little if any ground, and you can look to your right to see why. That kid is 26yo, has a liberal arts degree, and a certificate that is restricted to that airframe, with that airline. He's got few if any solo hours in his logbook, over half of his time is in a sim, and he's happy to be there.

Hey, Top 3, you told me to fire out the gun and the EOR crew didn't fuck with the limiter. No problems here!

...Red Air?

What she fails to recognize is the difference in work produced for a day of active duty per a day of Reserve/NG. I am currently AD. If I have a training event next week, I may have to prepare. While I prepare, I am still getting paid. When I go to this training event, I will not have to ask for time off of work, it will be built into my schedule. When I was a reservist, I had to get ready for the training scheduled next drill weekend. I had to do this while back at home wearing civilian clothes. For no pay. I also had to ensure that I had time off of work when drill weekend came around--possibly for a loss of pay. Apples and oranges, Lolita.

Ok, I'm going to go out on a limb and spur debate in the false hope that there is really a mythical flag officer lurking... In my last couple of years in Hogs, it seemed as though everyone who didn't get another ops assignment felt "shitcanned", as though there were no earthly way that they would ever get back to the jet again. When did we start looking upon all out-of-the-cockpit tours as one-way? I thought that these were intended, among other things, to support the overall effort and be "broadening" tours. I understand that neither FTU production nor professional development opportunities in the ops world will support everyone getting a tx course that wants one. But we've seriously oversteered that course. TX course slots are written on the wall when someone is staring at their RPA/ALO/AETC assignment. Noone trusts Big Blue even one iota at this point--and we're about to pay for it. We're running FTU like Marine Boot Camp, as though we expect 70-85% attrition from first term boots, and we're going to keep milling out new recruits to keep up with the outflow. My suggestion is this: dial it back a bit at the B-course. It's not an exact 1 for 1 tradeoff from a tx to a b-course'er, so some money will be made there right off the bat. We can't obviously have a moratorium on b-courses (though I wouldn't put it past the AF to try that), I do understand that we do have to keep new blood flowing in. But if more TX courses are available, you could show the dudes in the squadron--the ones there right now--that there is life after an ALFA, and maybe, just maybe, they won't punch right at their ADSC because they fully expect to get bent over on their next assignment. The way that we show them this is to have dudes show up at hail-and-farewells fresh from their ALO/AETC/RPA assignments. Suddenly, the ones that wouldn't otherwise punch at their first opportunity might see other options. Wishful thinking, I know. Life isn't fair, and none of this will ever happen. Let's discuss.

Which is why this might be the smart, albeit short term play, ironically. I know dudes that are on their fourth (4) ops assignment. You might be able to sell someone nearing the end of their second assignement that there is still hope of returning to the jet after ALO/whitejet/etc. Likewise, that opens up the oppurtunity to draw from the deepest well as TAMInated alluded to: the TAMI-21'ers. If there is anyone who will pay you back with a few extra years service for the opportunity to get back into their jet, it's prob these folks. From there, your next deepest well will be the rest of the 11F's that have been sitting in dumpsters. And there is hope: just had two dudes in my sq get their ticket to the island with this vml: they are going back to their pointy nosed jet. But this all assumes that RPA's aren't among the list of bills that the porch has to pay--false assumption, and probably why hindsight is right, and this will never happen. But I also see it as the reason why we will not see a stop loss, for two reasons: #1: In order for a stop loss to be implemented, Big Blue would have to admit that it fucked up. Uhhmmm, yeah right. It was one thing for the mass wave of stop losses that happened a-la early 2003, ergo, #2: There is no looming contingency op (other that those that have been ongoing for 10yrs+), so that would further feed the vicious WTF-cycle back to #1. No, a projected airline hiring wave, itself the brainchild of quite a few economic assumptions, does not constitute a contingency. Sorry. My bet is that the AF will go to congress with it's hat in hand and ask for the easiest (and arguably least effective) solution: higher bonuses. FY14.

Left rear fender: appears everyone continued to play through.

Aww c'mon; you just had to go there? Did NOT need that visual in my cranium this morning.

Yeah, he could pull off a Navy O-6 character.

FG, As I see it, your limfac pitching into this fight is the JFTR. DTS was designed around that document. The reason that DTS is such a cumbersome pain in the ass is that, well, the JFTR is a ginormous, cumbersome, pain in the ass reg. In order to make DTS a more useable system you would have to literaly scrap the JTR and start from scratch there. The JTR, and ergo DTS, are documents/systems caught up in the dual task of performing their primary function while at the same time defending against FWA; already touched on in previous posts. What was also already mentioned, is that the dream interface from the user perspective is an interactive 1352-1 format. But that old friend depended on a well versed, multi-layer QC process that started at the finance office, and went through several layers of beurocracy that you could speak to better than I. But from my perspective, I only had to be able to fill out the simple form. Whether or not it got audited 6-9 months from now was not my problem.

Ok, so in the spirit of this thread, is this a good or bad thing? Is the ice cream cone just continuing to lick itself, or is there hope? Will she do anything to get us a tanker/F-35/CSAR platform/for the love of god stop the flow of flatscreen TV's (is that even an AFMC thing?)? The obligitory first-female________ PA drivel doesn't bode well, but lets see if there's something positive:

...and his name was Shaved Dog's Ass

Anyone tried to switch to Roth contributions yet? I'm not seeing anything in MyPay to make that change.

Nope. Annuity model. Based on a total 7% roi (4% return, 3% saved for cola increases), it would take an additional $30k increase in annuity value to drive the 2.5% additional retirement benefit. Again, dependen on where you finish off on the pay scale. Give or take...

I recently did the math for grins, and depending on where you end up on the pay scale, it equates to ~$30k per year to stay after 20. That's the rough equivalent addition to the retirement annuity to push the extra 2.5%. So someone separating 2 years early is giving up ~$60k of value. But hey, if you've got something better lined up, I say go for it.

They were not making a political endorsement. It would have been entirely different if out of nowhere someone had shoved a microphone under their nose and they popped the clutch on their mouth.

Yeah, my takeaway from that whole "article" was: Nothing to See Here. Hell, I'd cash in one or two of my AMs to get a reliable ARC210.

It's like BQZip's mating call!

Ok, I give up. Where's the downside?

Whoa, whoa, WHOA, there, Tex. That's not entitlement money, that's the Government's money! They better have used their GTC. Just sayin...

Clearly this line of defense was lifted from BODN...