brabus

I’ve done it, they wanted a letter from my CC stating I was on terminal leave and the orders would in fact be ending on X date. They don’t seem to care about the nuance of retiring vs. ending guard full time orders. Edit: I think the verbiage was something like I had 18 days of leave left and would be free to work full time for DAL starting X date, and on Y date I would end these orders and become a DSG.

Kind of, this rapidly can become an apples and oranges discussion. You want to be wolf of Wall Street, well yeah you should probably have a degree from Harvard or whatever. But I know too many guys making the same money as an O-5 pilot with zero degree and doing skilled labor/own their own business in that area of expertise. A buddy’s son is 21 making 6 figures with zero debt as a lineman. That kid is crushing life compared to all of his peers racking up debt getting their bullshit degree who will then get jobs post-college that won’t touch his earnings for many years, and on top of it they’ve got debt to pay off. There’s a significant, insatiable demand for skilled labor and will be for decades to come. Oh, and now we have major airline pilots without degrees who will absolutely crush their doctor peers in long term earnings. Lots of opportunity to make a solid living without a college degree, just depends on what you want to do for a living.

I feel similarly about college as I do K-12. It’s bullshit and exists almost entirely to push narratives and maximize profits, while dragging Americans into debt (which begets a lot of profit). The only thing nowadays that college “makes sense” for is specific career paths that require a degree, such as doctor, engineer, or lawyer. Everyone else should go get actual training/education relevant to their chosen profession instead of wasting time and money on useless degrees.

100%. School choice is the best and most viable solution that currently exists. Hopefully we start to see more traction, but holy hell the progressives are putting up a massive fight. Fucking teacher unions need to be destroyed.

Well to be fully transparent I believe all public education is dog shit at this point. If you’re ranked #1, you’re simply just the best of the worst. Someone’s #1 at nav school…but they’re still a nav! And it’s not difficult for me to personally fathom the problems, I’ve lived them first hand in a deeply progressive state that was sold as “great schools.” Turns out they’re horrendous schools from every angle you look at it. For example, the highly ranked high school in our previous district, which costs almost $19k per student, is producing less than 50% math proficient and less than 63% reading proficient. That’s an epic failure, but they’re still considered a “great” school district. Bottom line, the idea of moving to a specific area because of the “great schools” is a dead notion in our country, no such thing anymore in the public sphere…until we have a massive overhaul which will have to be nothing short of “burn it down” and build anew. Probably won’t ever happen.

Imagine a war without rip-its, no thanks.

I think that is what happened. But here’s the thing, there are thousands (probably tens of thousands unfortunately) stories just like this every year across high school and college campuses that have zero to do with cadet rank. It’s senior vs. freshman, he’s popular and she doesn’t want to go against that for fear of being ostracized, he’ll get me ______ if I do this (transactional), varsity vs. JV, first chair band vs. no chair band, etc. Perception of someone being “over” someone else is woven into the human fabric as Ratner pointed out. Thinking you can eradicate that is as stupid and naive as people like AOC/Greta regarding all their climate change bullshit. Rank may have been the thing in this specific situation you mentioned, but it is very likely this girl would have still found herself in this situation if JROTC didn’t even exist. Her problem isn’t JROTC or ranks, it’s her upbringing and caving to social pressures (that her parents didn’t prepare her for clearly).

Chicago alone has over 30 public schools that charge on average around $35k/yr tuition and 0% of the students are grade level math proficient. One charges $52k/yr! Yeah I’d say there’s some massive problems in CPS, and cadet rank isn’t one of them. Chicago is a great example of incredible failure in so many spectrums of society. But I guess that’s what happens when you clearly have so many stupid people living together in one area - they get what they vote for.

The last, missing part should be, after 1 hr of sitting in EOR: “we just went to 300, launch now!”…#4’s gear isn’t even up when, “hey it’s the SOF on AUX, we just went below mins, divert the 8 ship to Tokyo.” 100% true story.

He’s not the first victim of AJ’s and he won’t be the last!

To be honest, yeah I am, for stupid shit like flight suit sleeves, reflective belts, PT gear while deployed, and masks. I do plenty of the other stupid shit like useless CBTs, show up 6.9 hrs early for the rotator, 1206s, and a thousand other things I didn’t like/disagreed with. It’s called critically thinking and being OK with living in the gray (and that’s what wins fights, not zero critical thought yes men). But none of that’s important, what’s important is you’re like every shitty E-9 who has zero critical thinking skills and touts illogical shit like, “if you can’t tuck your PT shit in, how can I trust you to drop a bomb.” You’re willing to Art 15 people over nonsensical bullshit that has zero impact on mission accomplishment. I’ll give you one thing though, you are completely owning it and making it easy to know what kind of a person you are.

No lessons will be learned by far too many people in the govt and this country in general.

Rog, in the 11F world you can use AGR and ART synonymously for purposes of this specific discussion (I’ve also been an ART). But in the end this is a very subjective discussion and there is not a one-size-fits-all answer to post-full time mil life. The biggest point to take away is there are a ton of invalid WOMs out there about airline life that specifically stop people from considering it (stopped me for the longest time). Turns out when you actually listen to people who have lived both lives, you’ll hear some very different perspectives compared to the WOMs.

(Apparently) stabilized approach criteria is for pussies!

SLC base, direct flights from home airport. 3-4 per day (only one mainline), which is actually average at best. Lots of guys have double digit commute options on multiple airlines. So I really don’t have an amazing commute deal, but goes to show even something that’s average is good enough! Guys who get BF’d a lot are the ones who choose to live in a place with one flight a day on an RJ - yep, going to buy yourself some extra nights away if you go that route.

The guard is hands down better than AD, but even on non-drill weeks (so 4 day week) I still left the house before kids were up/just getting up and maybe made it to dinner on time. Still had those nights of sitting at the counter putting my shit together for the next day instead of hanging out with my wife, or staying late for an IPUG debrief and missing the kids altogether. I certainly had a far better QOL as an AGR than on AD, but it’s still a full time mil job. My experience is as a fighter guy, maybe it’s different in other communities. All that to say the guard is infinitely better than AD, but it’s still the mil and still far more days spent working/not getting the max QOL with family you want compared to the airlines (in my experience). I haven’t even touched TDYs and deployments (easy to conveniently forget those months away from home when making a “home life” argument against airlines). I think the night the lightbulb on was when I was making the “yeah but I don’t want to be away from home, done that long enough” argument to my brother, and he laughed while responding, “you’re in the middle of a multi-month TDY right now!” Checkmate… I can commute both ends of my tips about 95% of the time, so I rarely spend an extra night away from home (and I’m junior…probably goes to 99.9% in another 6 months). I do admit that is not applicable across the board as commuting is extremely dependent on what category you’re in, where do you live, what is the flight volume/schedule between your local airport and hub, 1 hop vs. 2 hop, etc. But I think most guys don’t lose many days, if any. A great part about the airlines is you have lots of options for basing, commutes, aircraft, etc. Yes seniority plays into this, but generally you can live anywhere in the country and do this job, so how great (or shitty) your commute is rests significantly on your life decisions and what you’re willing to deal with in order to live in location X. I’d love to live in base, but there’s not a single airline base in this country I want to live in, so I’ll be commuting my whole career. Sure it’s not ideal, but we are living out dream life exactly where we want to be (and want our kids to be). That is worth the commute to me any day of the week.

9-12, 15-16 if I want to do an extra trip. But keep in mind, if I do 15 days, I still have 2x the time off as a standard AD guy, and I spend zero seconds at home thinking about work, texting about work, getting a brief together for tomorrow morning, etc. And I know someone is thinking, “yeah but I’m home at night for the kids”…yeah, that’s real quality time when you see them for about 30 min at night before bed (if you’re lucky enough to get home that early). I used to tell myself that lie too. Now it’s dad takes kids to school, picks them up, goes to activities or plays around all afternoon post-school. That is actual quality of time with them, and I happily trade that for the 5 nights a week I may or may not have seen them for a few min before they’re in bed (when I wasn’t TDY or deployed of course). FWIW I was very resistant to the idea for years and made all the same arguments for why I wouldn’t want to be an airline guy. I only have one regret, and that is I didn’t figure it out earlier.

I say his statement is applicable to everyone, including the NB commuter (like me, for example). Of course I’d love to have the additional benefits of living in base, but even a NB commuter lives a life far exceeding the mil life in several ways (namely compensation and QOL). If one doesn’t find that true, then they’re either doing it wrong or very junior (probably both).

I’ve had double billeting on normal TDYs several times throughout my career. Never heard of it being explicitly not allowed, but of course single billeting is always the goal and generally works out.

I should have put ‘running’ in quotes, I agree.

Not what I was referring to. @Lord Ratner incorrect assertions as they apply to the discussion at hand.

Ha! I’m glad this bullshit is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Talked to someone who has spent time in the room with JB…wow. Unbelievable this guy is running the country.

I get it, but I still think there are situations where some guys go too far with “fuck the company” and fuck over a lot of people because of their quest for ultimate spite. You can play hardball and still seek to minimize pain for people when able, they are not completely mutually exclusive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating taking extensions, sprinting a mile from TSA to the gate, skipping the shitter, etc. But I’m also not going to purposely come up with a bullshit excuse to force a timeout to force a canx just because I want to be a dick to the company. Seen that one, and I just don’t agree with it.

But you know how confidently wrong they are all the time! They’re good at one thing, and that’s it right there.