Smokin

Look at the separation reg, forget the name of it since haven't looked at it since I punched. But, if it hasn't changed in the last few years, "normal" separation timeline is between 180 and 365 days. If that works, simple as filling out the form online. Took me about 10 min if I recall correctly. To leave in less than 180 days, took OG/CC level approval, so depends on the climate of your group/wing. I think it'd be pretty tough to get less than 90 days, but if you keep a healthy leave balance, terminal leave could probably get you there. For reference, from when I got my airline offer until my class date was 5 weeks and that was crazy quick. By the time they sent me my paperwork on what all I needed to do, I was already multiple weeks behind for turning stuff in. I think more normal timeline is 60 or more days from offer to class date. So, if you keep a leave balance of roughly 60 days (max use or lose is 120 now for covid), and your OG or equivalent isn't a tool, you should be able to separate fairly comfortably in 120 days. That being said, don't be the guy that puts down an availability date that you're not sure you can make. Probably worth having the conversation with your commander to make sure he'll back you with for a quick exit once the airlines start hiring again. If you're not willing to show your cards, save up the leave and put your avail at six months notice.

One word of caution from a guy who got a full ride ROTC scholarship out of high school for a liberal arts degree; you might think twice about putting all your eggs in the pilot basket. It worked out great for me and I wouldn't change a thing. Been flying fighters for 15 years now and not once have I wished I'd done a technical degree. But if I'd had a medical issue, I'm not sure what I would have done for a living with my degree other than a career in the AF as intel or become a professor. I'm sure some contractor gigs could have opened up, but looking back I basically put my entire life's income on red. As I said, worked out great for me, but YMMV.

Here's some more info from a trusted source. https://www.esgr.mil/USERRA/Frequently-Asked-Questions Specifically interesting in this case for you would be the documents required upon return: DD214 - Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty; Copy of duty orders prepared by the facility where the orders were fulfilled and carrying an endorsement indicating completion of the described service; Letter from the commanding officer of a Personnel Support Activity or someone of comparable authority; Certificate of completion from military training school; Discharge certificate showing character of service; Copy of extracts from payroll documents showing periods of service. ------------ This means you don't actually have to give them any information that would show you never left active duty. You could simply get an MFR from your new commander or the commander of the MPF at your new base stating your service time. You also only need to date the letter starting at or slightly before the day that they would call you back. Given the current environment, I'm assuming that will be after your current no-kidding retirement date. Similarly, your requal school orders and then PCS orders would also suffice and also likely be past the date you would have otherwise retired. Thus there is no way for them to know you never had a break in service since that seems to be a hang up for them, even though that is never mentioned in the law.

Completely agree with HuggyU2. Your employer is full of it. The part I quoted specifically mentions "Active Duty". You would be fully within your rights to drop long term mil leave. That being said, I would follow HuggyU2's advice and talk to a USERRA lawyer first just to make completely sure only because if your employer disagrees, you may need to take legal action afterwards.

Forgot to add, I would probably go back if I were you. If you enjoyed AD for the most part and are willing to go back, that would be the financially smart thing to do. You have your line number, so assuming the airline doesn't go under, you can return at year 3 or 4 pay which is way better than year 1 pay. You'll also keep all the non-rev benefits and such in the meantime. To me, this is not only the smart thing for you, but also helps your fellow classmates. One less pilot on the active payroll is one pilot closer to not having to furlough guys who don't have another career they could go back to.

The entire statute is fairly short. If you are an airline guy and have relied on WOMs, just read it. It'll take you 10 min tops and you won't get bad gouge from a guy who heard it from a guy. https://www.justice.gov/crt-military/userra-statute One notable highlight on USERRA for this case; it says nothing about a break in service: The term 'service in the uniformed services' means the performance of duty on a voluntary or involuntary basis in a uniformed service under competent authority and includes: active duty, active duty for training, initial active duty for training, inactive duty training, full-time National Guard, a period for which a person is absent from a position of employment for the purpose of an examination to determine the fitness of the employment for the purpose of performing funeral honors duty as authorized by section 12503 of title 10 or section 115 of title 32.

Have you tried surgery? The waiver for return to fly post sinus surgery was fairly quick. I was DNIF for roughly two months from surgery to waiver approved. Have had WAY less sinus issues since and that was almost 10 years ago.

I don't think I'd fly BFM two weeks later. A low g sortie like CAS or something might be ok, but a friend flew after two weeks and he was in some moderate pain during/after the flight. Based on his recommendation, I waited 3.5 weeks and felt fine, so I'd go with at least 3 weeks. In the scope of your career, what's another week to avoid a potential complication?

Daily Star (not the best source for news) has the crash 10km from "a US military base", so could have been during takeoff or landing, which would explain the condition of the airplane. But, if that's the case, I would have hoped we could secure the crash site faster than the photos would suggest.

The same security forces that put their bullets on my paper at the range. And if your base is guarded by rent-a-cops, there'd better be a defib machine nearby because there's going to be a heart issue if they have to run anywhere. Maybe that's why the sheriff's office got there first at P-Cola.

Between the free advice from friends who are where you want to be, the insane amount of advice on forums like this and APC, and the advice you're about to pay for with interview prep, I bet you'll be fine. I didn't buy or read that book or any other and it worked out just fine for me. But to play devils advocate against myself, it is a huge career money-wise, so another $20 or whatever he's charging probably is a drop in the bucket.

If the guy was always the smartest person in the room, I bet that the interview is what tanked him. Of the roughly 10 guys at my interview that started a group text to keep track of results, only one guy didn't get hired (recently retired AF). Had one of the interviewers pulled me aside as I was walking out and asked "one guy isn't going to get hired, who is it?" I'd have said that guy. It was obvious to a third grader that he was massively stressed. Everyone was stressed and excited, but I think he had psyched himself out. If you are current in a USAF fixed wing airplane and have your ATP, you are very competitive. If you're not current, may need to start moonlighting as a CFI or accept a penalty lap at a regional. Here is a list of things that could tank you in the interview (not comprehensive, but probably close): Lying on your app (most common is padding the hours or avail date) Not doing your homework / interview / test prep Being a douche If you get an interview, the airline has already flown you out to talk to them. They want to hire you. Reinforce the reasons they saw in your app and don't give them a reason to not hire you. It's a big opportunity. Start prepping a full year out for the app and interview for at least a few hours a week building to a few hours a day in the month prior. Do that and you'll be confident enough to be yourself (or if you're a douche, be someone else. In that case, don't apply at my airline).

FWIW, half the guys in my unit (including me) don't even have rank on the old style jackets, let alone the new water proof ones.

Assuming the CA attempted to exit at that taxiway, might have been a good day to let it slow down a bit before taxing clear. Had roughly 7K runway remaining.

I call BS on this. I get that some of the younger generation seem inept and to have no common sense. They seem to have had the easiest childhood and have no real problems to worry about. Everything has been handed to them. But I'd bet that almost every generation has said that about the generation that followed them. I don't think it possible to imagine anyone who can get a passing ASVAB score for even a cop to enter the military is dumb enough to think that the only choices for working out is either to not work out at all or to become a division one athlete. The problem we have with people failing the PFT is that they just don't care. Show me someone who wants to stay in and is actually concerned with passing the PFT and I bet that person could run a single mile a week and end up passing. Problem with not caring is all the training in the world won't help a bit. It's not that hard; our fitness standards are embarrassingly low.

Fill out the off base employment form with your commander, that would protect you from the military side. If the airline goes after you *cough Delta* they would have to go after ALL pilots who have side jobs or they are violating federal discrimination laws as Delta is finding out with a class action lawsuit that Delta is going to lose big time. For the life insurance thing, if you're worried about it, buy your own from AAFMA. Mine is dirt cheap for $800K and they don't care a bit who you were working for or what your orders said. And if you fill out that form with the AF, I don't think you'd have any problem with a line of duty determination. BLAB: You're fine as long as you cover your bases paperwork-wise.

Word of caution, as far as I know the legacy airlines save or print your app the day they send the invite to the interview. We had to sit down and make any changes in red ink, so don't put down an availability you can't make thinking you can change it later. I've heard guys advise to put down one date to get the interview and then change the availability as soon as you have an interview secured. A change of a few weeks would be easy to explain, but if it is significant, that will probably affect your interview results.

If you read any of the threads at APC, everyone says you'll know if you picked the correct airline when you retire. I'd pick based on: 1. first major that hires you 2. a second major that hires you that has a domicile where or closer to where you want to live 3. future plans (i.e. do you someday want to have a chance to fly a 787 to Sydney and make $350K for working 9 days a month or want the option to non-rev to Europe once in a while) As a new hire at a legacy, I picked the first airline that hired me and stuck with it after another legacy offer because of the better possibility of option 3 and they were both pretty similar short commutes.

I've heard of military guys getting invites 9 months prior to their avail date. Pair that with 69+ days of terminal and you're potentially getting the interview a year out from your ADSC. A smart guy starts actively prepping (apps, recs, interview prep) a year from possible interview, so 3 years is a bit ambitious, but not crazy. Really the only money you waste putting your apps in early is the annual fee for the app websites. Many interview prep places are one payment for life, so might as well start a while out.

Sounds like on opportunity to instruct young airmen on their mission in the AF, and if they didn't respond appropriately, then have a talk with the life support officer. If we can't fix broken shit in the ops building ourselves, how can we expect big blue to fix broken shit outside the ops building?

Only if you've actually in processed already. Under contract but not PCS complete means nothing for being grandfathered.

They have a Technical Skills Assessment (TSA, poor choice of abbreviation for an airline). During the TSA, you basically brief and chair fly a taxi, takeoff, departure, arrival, landing, and taxi to a current captain as if you are the captain. During the cruise portion will get some minor problem where you have to go through the checklist. SIDs and STARs are also covered. During that portion, anything related to the SID/STAR/Approach is fair game. I got a couple GK questions in addition to the SID/STAR/Approach questions. By crazy luck, I just happened to have studied those exact questions, so got them right and he moved on to the CRM portion. You don't have to be a current aerospace engineer like at Delta, but I'd be ready for some quick GK/rules questions as I got some.

I wouldn't hit publish on the app until you're ready for the hiring department to go through your app and judge if you're getting an invite. You don't know what algorithms they use for the computers to ping a person look at your app. You wouldn't want someone to throw you back to the bottom of the pile because you hit submit before it was really ready. That being said, I took two solid months filling the app out and sending out the recs. For the next two months, I pinged guys who didn't send the rec back and had every airline guy who had time to go through my app and find errors. You'd be shocked at what you'll miss. Regardless of the airline, start brushing up on your non-mil aviation GK. Delta's test is a ball crusher. United is way better, but you may still get asked that one random question that every regional guy knows that you never cared to learn because it didn't apply to you flying for Uncle Sam.

The pilots need to stop saying that it's not about the money because money is part of it. Quality of life is everything and money is a significant part of QOL. So are flying more, shorter deployments, less queep, etc. No one is leaving the AF at 12 years with the plan to fly for the regionals for the rest of their career, so money is absolutely a significant part. Hard to get mad at HAF for believing what pilots are telling them.

Yes. Was doing a shelf check at the BX a few weeks ago and overheard two airmen that had dr appointments to get their waiver the next week. "Easy bro, just dry shave for 3 days before your appointment and you're golden."