discus

So I never spend my AD time PLANNING to go to the airlines. I litaraly just got bored and had a friend applying to Skywest. When he showed up for his interview, I decided to go through class with him, so I applied. (Keep in mind that this is 2017 pre 'Rona). I was in class two weeks later. Here are things that I learned in the first six months, keeping in mind that I ignored all the airline talk in the squadron cuz I was gonna be retired and only half listened. All advice I am about to give is based on your stated preferences, which are remarkably similar to mine: -Living in base is EVERYTHING. Commuting sucks. Don't do it unless you just can't stand living in one of the bases of your desired airline. I had to commute DEN to ORD for all of a month. After that, sitting reserve at home was awesome! Putz around the house with the phone on. NBD. -Once I got a line, the advantage of a regional is that there are a lot of kids who are super hungry for hours, so I gave away enough trips a month to work 30-40 hours (8 ish days away) per month. That was also perfect for me. Working just enough to still enjoy it just became easier after COVID. -Disadvantage is pay. Skywest starts out at $50/hour when a major airline doubles that. But, I was a Nav, so I didn't have the turbine time requirement to go straight to the "Majors". I think the same work schedule is possible at the Major Airlines fairly quickly, but I can't speak to it, I only have second hand knowledge, which is probobly the same as you have from the beat up old reserve LtCol who works for Southwest that you hang out with. -Huge advantage is travel benifits. My wife and I have produced no crotch fruit and don't plan to. Kids out of the house is same thing. Wanna go hang in Hawaii for the weekend? The price is zero. Want a beer in Germany? $Free.95. You get the idea. We actually ran the calculations, and with my time off to free time ratio, we hit the road so much that the math said it trippled my paycheck in '19 in that benifit alone. YMMV based on crash 9/11, crash of '08, 'Rona, Godzilla attack, etc. Bottom line is that I love it. Best part is going into work, getting on the jet, doing airplane things, and walking off with about 5 min of time spent on briefing/debriefing. You go to work to go FLY. The way God intended it. Appologies to anyone here for my threadjack, I hope it's good info. Come stop by my airpark home with your fancy RV sometime. I'll provide the beer. 7CO0 is the airport ID just NW of KDEN.

I retired from the Air Force. I financially planned for 20 years to be fully retired at the age of 41. I sat around doing whatever I wanted for two years. Then I got bored, and the wife got tired of me always being around. So I went and found gainful employment that was also fun for me.

Don't get me wrong. I love the regional gig. Where else in the civilian world do you get to click the auto pilot off at 15K feet, cancel IFR, and hand fly a jet into Glacier National Park or many other NTA's out there on a regular basis? (And not have to haul your own Ice and snacks like the biz jet guys) I thought I was retired for two years. Turns out I was just unemployed. It'll happen. +1 on the correction for "Jobs". The unions facilitate some stability in an otherwise super unstable industry.

Sure, In a nutshell, scope basically is a union negotiated strategy to save mainline jobs. Since we are a dirty contractor flying under the banner of United, American, etc, it says that we can only operate xx number of 50 seat aircraft and yy number of 76 seat aircraft in the fleet. Additionally, it says that we can only fly a certain percentage of mainline narrow body routes. It’s cheaper for United to contract with us, and have us fly say the DEN to IND route, but we can’t do it because of union restrictions, so they have to put a 737 on it with a mainline pay flight crew, even though that route traditionally only has about 64 people booked on any given flight. Scope was further reduced after ‘Rona in the union contracts with their parent companies. There is nothing the regional companies can do about these agreements, they just have to eat the shit that’s given to them. to be fair, in my opinion I think it’s a good thing. There should never, ever be a contracted regional jet carrying more than 50 PAX. Everything else should be at mainline pay. But your ticket prices would reflect that if it were to happen. So, I continue to fly my regional 76 seat jet which has been “scoped” to 70 seats by the ‘Rona. TLDR; Unions

Just a regional guy here (gimmick a break, I was a fucking Nav), but I am flying for THE regional. Skywest flies for American, Delta, UA, and Alaska. We are seeing a huge uptick in travel, and many of our jets have been full or nearly full. Now some of that is due to scope clause, but we are getting busier and busier. I do see the industry picking up steam faster than they thought it would, and see no reason why that wouldn’t continue. Our company is talking about resuming upgrades this summer and new hire by fall. Traditionally, the regionals are the first to see increase in flying. We are also adding cities right and left due to being scoped out of traditional routes. (Using a 737 at 60% capacity KDEN to KIND is a symptom of scope). Side note: if you are a USAF pilot, DO NOT go UQ in your last year, or you will be sitting here with me, yanking gear for a Nav.

Man, I think it’s been three years or better since I’ve looked at Baseops. Almost Five years since I retired. Since everything went crazy, I found myself wondering what the BO crowd was saying.Tonight, I finally looked. I’ve read through a few threads, and must say...I am still impressed by the level of discussion here. Y’all are awesome. And also, thanks to Congressman for standing up for what he believes is right. Takes some nuts. Props to y’all for great discussion as well. Quality people here, man. Proud to have served with most of ya!

Damn... Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network Forums

https://www.youcaring.com/ashley-eadie-654162 Posted by a squadron mate. Him, Him. Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network Forums

This needs to be ended. At least he isn't some screaming liberal douche nozzle who has never served and hates all things military. Constructive feedback has been given. He can take it or leave it.

Clearly sounds like a Lt on casual who was forced to work in an MPF somewhere.

What's funny is, I'm fairly sure this thread was well on its way to being dead before "spark" stepped in to defend his "bro".

NATO AWACS wears the country flag as shown with squadron patch below (his website says he was stationed in Germany) Obviously he is not wearing a NATO AWACS patch. I could forgive the helmet as it could be something his handlers thought might be a good idea, but the ENJJPT patch is unforgivable, and misleading. Don't know the guy.

Yeah Huggy, talking about our generation is much better than the teenage wasteland of today. However, with the airlines hiring again, Fingers will have to remember that the exodus is here.

Good words, GP. Here is an article with a bit more on the advisor mission. You can see how thankful the Afghans are for our time and money: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/world/asia/us-is-struggling-in-its-effort-to-build-an-afghan-air-force.html?_r=2&referer=

Don't do it. No vag there. No one will blame you if you jump ship, I'm pretty sure. It's not helping America, and it's for sure not worth your life. If you can get out of it, by all means, run far and run fast.

Thanks, Gearpig. It's important to remember there are 400+ brothers and sisters sentenced to that each year with no end in sight.

I went over there as a non vol staff weenie. The orders were a gift on my 18 year, 360th day in the AF (no shit). Pretty much every prior E gets hit with these so I knew it was coming. I let it roll, because I wanted to roll the dice vs not having to serve a sentence at the 'Deid. I flew quite a bit as a "guardian angel" which means that while the IPs are trying to teach the Afghans to fly airplanes, you sit in back, ready to cap one that gets out of hand. I'm a 39 year old dude, and not made to run around with full body armor on every day, yet that's what I did. Even as a staff weenie, I still had an Afghan counterpart that I was trying to "mentor". As far as the flying goes, the Afghans are pretty terrible at it as a general rule. If you have never had the opportunity to teach a C-130 "AC" that he needs to keep one wing low when landing in a cross wind, this is your opportunity. Everything you do is dangerous. I raised my rifle with intent to shoot over two occasions in the one year I was there. I didn't end up pulling the trigger for different reasons each time, but the threat was still there. Had a truck bomb go off right outside the base gate one morning. If I had not been lazy, I would have been right by it on my morning run. Two of my former office mates were killed two weeks ago when their helo Caught a mooring cable from an aerostat on a routine visit to headquarters. Getting out of there in tact both physically and mentally is about luck, not skill. The mission is pretty hopeless, and you will come home disgruntled at both the Air Force and the 16 years of terrible foreign policy our country as a whole has had. Oh, add on to your 365 two months at lovely McGuire AFB under GO 1 for Air Advisor training, where you will receive a code on your SURF saying that you can do that and are highly susceptible to having to do it again. Overall, I'd take the Deid any day over that place. I promise I will write more coherently when I have not been drinking. Please feel free to fire away with further questions. That job + all the extraneous factors going on in the AF I joined 20 years ago made me push the button for retirement. I'm done. They took away any love I might have had left for our service. Sorry I can't speak more to the guard/reserve aspect, but I might be able to come up with what I remember when I have not been going shot for shot with my wife for every kid at our door who is that bitch from Frozen.

Just got done with a year of this bullshit. I can answer questions. Also, the weapons laws were a bit better when I left. M-9 loaded and off safe, M-4, one in the chamber on safe.

Not one more U.S. Life to that goddamn shit hole. Please. No more. It takes healthy troops and money and only gives back heartbreak and broken families. RIP, brothers. Damn.

Would have never happens if the Viper had a Flight Engineer.

This program is a sink hole for all the other services too. I currently work with several Air Force, Navy, and Marine "Hands". The only one getting anything out of it is the Marine, who was put there simply as a holding pattern until he took over as a Squadron commander (C-130 pilot), and therefore it made no difference to him. One of the Navy dudes is an F/A-18 bubba, USNA grad, and getting tagged for this program will take him out of the cockpit...And promotion potential to O-4 for good.

AFPAK Hands - RUN! Run far and run fast. It may have been fun back in the days when they got to roam around Afghanistan with a full beard, sleep in mud huts and do whatever they wanted to...(For some, not me) I work with a bunch of them here and these days they all go to non flying staff gigs. It's a terrible deal. Two deployments required. One 10 months and the other 12 months. A shitty deal all around.

They have been trying to justify the incredible cost overruns of PDF forms for years, and recently put in a proposal to cut all IBM forms, however congress is preventing it's retirement due to it's effectiveness.

From the CAF perspective - Dr's only purpose in life is to make you not able to fly/do your job. We have a LtCol pilot in Afghanistan right now with a broken wrist. His fix? A wrist guard from the BX. Maybe a bit extreme, but now you understand the mentality. Does said knee injury prevent you from running/jumping/walking? If so, Dr. is needed. If you can tough it out, no Dr. needed.

You guys are awesome!