Gazmo

You're going to be hard pressed to make what you made as a Sr. 0-3 AGR and it'll only get worse as you gain rank. You also won't get the ACP. Did they hire you as a step 1 or something higher? I assume you're a fighter guy pulling Title 10 - Noble Eagle alert on the weekends? We had that in the tanker world, but lost it 2 years ago to the AD. I took a $15,000 pay cut! Alert is a good deal. Can you pull alert from home? I worked on a fairly extensive Excel-base calculator that I've been trying to develop as an eye-opening ART recruiting/retention tool for my unit. The difference between ART and AGR pay is significant and really justifies bringing an O-4 type in as a Step 7 with a 25% rentention bonus to get anything near what an AGR would make with ACP. That was factoring in 84 Inactive Duty Periods. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

They picked the IOTE people over a year ago. What's funny is they wanted a smattering of experience (co's, AC's and IP's), but the process takes so long that the co's and AC's they selected are now AC's and IP's. This jet isn't going to replace the KC-135. Augment them maybe. I don't even see it being involved in the Global Strike mission. It's hard to believe, but there are some advantages using 60 year old equipment. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Technical difficulties posting. Let's try this again... I'm not so sure what's so crazy about some of these tanker TDY's. Although I can say I've been to some really spectacular TDY locations, I can't say that our fuel was not a necessity. I've spent over week in Souda Bay with hops to Lajes in between. I've lived in Spain for two months when we were shwacking Lybia in 2011. We were one of the first of many crews to bring a tanker into Moron for that operation and yes, you bet your ass that in between 10-12 hour missions, I toured the countryside of southern Spain and sat on many of nude beaches sipping ice cold sangria and Cruz Campo. I even got to walk through the Rock of Gibralter. You can also bet your ass I may have brought back three dozen bottles of Spanish wine and maybe even a few dirt cheap bottles of Cuban rum we can't get in the US. I've spent many of days broken in Hawaii on the way to Guam to support PACOM deployment while I swam in a salt water pool and drank Mai Tai's at the Outrigger Reef in Waikiki. I've spent many weeks here and there in northwestern Germany supporting NATO training and you can bet your ass I took back as much dirt cheap German Reisling while I made $100 a day in per diem. I can go on and on, but you know what? Those are the times I'll never forget and what makes me think, "Wow. We actually get paid really well to do this shit!". Like I said before; at the end of the day, someone needed a flying gas station nearby and we were there doing the mission while noone else in this world wasn't. There was a day when AMC didn't give a shit when we landed with 35k+ lbs of fuel on locals. Now we land Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Hell, the dudes that were flying the line in the 2007-08 timeframe have some pretty crazy stories. We had guys in the -135 go to the DO and validate a two week off-station sorties to knock out "training." VFR tours of San Francisco and pallets of wine, sorties to Hawaii to log an OCONUS sortie, and these were AMC dudes. Mildenhall had some great TDYs and the Kadena guys had crazier stories involving Thailand and Guam. QUALS: 135 IP. This sounds like what life used to be in the ANG all the time. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

The sky is falling. When there are talks about introducing a pilot bonus for DSG ANG/Reservists because people are walking away before their 2o years, you know it's bad. As the AF looses both airframes and people, they will continue to tap more and more into the ARC. I've heard a rumor they are kicking around a 1:4 dwell for ARC deployments. For guys in the 11-15 yr range who don't have a whole lot of AD time for a substantial retirement check at 6o years old, it'll be an easy decision to leave if they're well off at their civilian company. The ARC is not gonna swallow being deployed 100+ days a year without kicking and screaming. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

It ain't all about the money. The bonus concept is flawed in that the people who take the bonus are probably the ones who have no airline pilot aspirations and would stay whether there was a pilot bonus or not. You're right. We do make a lot of money. It's everything else that's chasing people away. Let's face it. You fly less and less after taking the bonus anyway. They offer a bonus to pilots to stay to fill command/staff billets, not keep experienced aircrew. Your crew dog hayday is between 0-2 and Jr. O-4. Your view is common for a single dude with no kids. I'm at the point in my life where I want to get paid to sit at home 16-20+ days per month and when I do work, I just want to fly an airplane that's younger than me and after I land from a 3 or 4 day trip, I want to grab my little roller bag and be able to leave the job behind me for the next 4 or 5 days. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

You mean those semi-annual colonoscopies aren't mandatory now? I have to have a serious conversation with my flight doc! Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Umm, not sure what you're getting at: - 72k officers/363k total in the USAF to share the workload (vs. 61k officers/307k total now)? - "Feet on the ramp" and other coercive policies to "encourage" folks to stay on AD? I sure hope we don't get to the point where the take rate is the same as FY98 (28% that year). Good news is it's already a whopping 35% TT My point was that they didn't learn much from the past. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

"Hey USAF! 1998 called. They want their pilot retention tools back!". Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

There is never going to be a good time to start hiring new "whipper snappers" at higher steps. Dissention is bound to happen, but I think it can be avoided with various tactics and the egos need to be put aside. Desperate times call for desperate measures. There aren't a whole lot of old heads left and the ones that are left are the ones who, for one reason or another, decided to stay in the ART program until the "bitter" end. They're not the ones leaving. It's senior captains thru young Lt Col's leaving because if you're in that generation, there is no bad time to leave the ART program. It's not like an AGR walking out the door at 15 yrs. These are the guys running shops. These are the line IP's and EP's doing the majority of your training and checkrides. You can't replace these people with 1Lt's out of UPT. You need these people to stay. NGB/AFRC should have a standarized recruiting and retention program for pilot ART's. You could use higher steps for new hires and retention bonuses for older ART's who didn't get lucky enough to be hired higher than a Step 1 (mirror the AGR ACP program). Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Yes, it is perfectly legal, but it seems HR personnel (who've I've always known to mostly be absolutely worthless when it comes to knowing their jobs) are more prone to say "no" than find the correct answer. My OG told me he was told no by HR the last time he tried to do this. OPM says you can hire at a higher step for "superior qualifications" or "special needs" positions. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/superior-qualifications-and-special-needs-pay-setting-authority/ This should be an NGB level issue and it is up to them to pry their heads out of their rectums when it comes to pilot ART recruiting/retention. They're about 5 yrs too late. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Yes... it talks about all of this in the OPM. It even talks about 25% bonuses for hard to fill positions. NGB isn't increasing units Civ pay budgets for this though, so units must choose wisely about how they spend their excess civ pay. What I'm saying is that most of the guys I know who got hired as an ART in the past 3 or 4 years would have never gathered the testicular fortitude to negotiate for a higher salary after waiting in line for a permanent ART job for almost a decade (or more). Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

From the text: REPORT.—Not later than February 1, 2016, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report setting forth the empirical case for an increase in special and incentive pay for aviation officers in order to address a specific, statistically-based retention problem with respect to such officers. The report shall include the results of a study, conducted by the Secretary in connection with the case, on a market-based compensa-tion approach to the retention of such officers that considers the pay and allowances offered by commercial airlines to pilots and the propensity of pilots to leave the Air Force to become commercial airline pilots. 1 Great. About 5 yrs too late... Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

You're preaching to the choir, but you have to understand that for years after 9/11 and during a stagnant airline industry when ART jobs were impossible to land, a culture developed where people waiting years to get an ART job weren't in a position to negotiate starting at anything other than a Step 1 without raising an eyebrow from folks who took the same job at Step 1 after being furloughed from their company. It is, however, a much different world now. This is not easy to implement because it could cause dissention anongst the troops. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

We've come full circle on this. Way back when I came off AD in 2006, my guard unit was hiring brand new 1Lt copilots as GS-13's. Sometime in the 2011-12 timeframe, some bean counter in HRO decided we couldn't do that anymore because they didn't fit the instructor pilot position description. We hired quite a few Co's and AC's at the GS-12 level who lost 10's of thousands of dollars. I believe all of us should be hired at the GS-13 level with varying steps depending on experience (CP/AC/IP/EP). My unit has never hired a new ART's at anything other than a step 1, but leadership has been reluctant to pull their heads of the sand when it comes to the ART life being less and less attractive to anyone with enough experience to go to a major airline. Don't even get me started with bonuses (or lack there of). Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Good on them... i knew there was a reason I had an app in their system. :) Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Brabus, I whole-heartedly agree and literally sat in my OG's office showing him all the OPM regs showing this very thing was legal (and appropriate), but noone wants to stick their junk out on the table for us because we've historically never had an issue hiring people into ART jobs and in leadership's eyes, there is no justification. What they don't understand is that this is not only going to be a hiring issue. It's a retainability issue. Ironically, the next in line dude they were planning on hiring into the next ART job just got hired with a major. Another one bites the dust. We've had 3 ARTs go to the airlines in the past few years and I can count at least 3 more who have their apps in. Leadership knows this. No talks of bonuses, but they do use 1 or 2 AGR billets as carrots. We're getting smarter than that. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Yeah, see how well that worked? They're really gonna save money when less than 50% of their full-time manning doesn't exist. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

The best thing about being a parent is having a whole day (or 18) off per month (especially in the summer) to spend with your kids in addition to tucking them in. 8 or 9 nights away from home per month could be worse. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Sounds like any normal office job. You want to be home more but you go to the airlines. You don't want to be an ART or AGR because you can make more money at an airline. Nothing makes you guys happy. That's the thing you don't seem to understand. If I were at an airline with 18 days off a month, I would be home more. I don't count the time I'm sleeping in my own bed as being home, because I get home from my office job at 1800 every night, go to bed at 2200 and I'm up at 0500 to do it all over again. I get about 4 hrs each night to spend with the family, do whatever household chores I need to do and go right back to it the next day. With the airlines, when you're not flying, you're off for 3 or 4 days straight. I have a few buds who sit reserve with Brand X and work anywhere from 0 to 8 days a month. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Imagine having to deal with all that stuff you mentioned 22 days out of the month. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Well said... Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

If anyone ever had aspirations to be an airline pilot, now's the time to go. I came off AD as a Palace Chaser almost 10 yrs ago, troughed and took every MPA, temp ART, temp AGR tour I could at my ANG unit while I waited for the "old heads" furloughed from Brand X (or on mil leave) to go back so I could pick up something permanent. I've been an ART for almost 4 years now and this gig is just not something I see myself doing anymore. It's an exhausting job. It's WORSE than AD in my opinion. Yeah, I'm home a lot and pretty much get to control my schedule, but I'm at the unit 10hrs a day, not including the few 15 hr days per month we night fly to burn our AFTP's. All while our AGR bretherin are making twice the coin to work less. What's worse than AD is that full-time manning is not enough to run the operation at the ops tempo we're at right now. Back in the day when the airlines weren't doing well, there were Lt's and young Capt's running around the squadron looking for projects to work on and helped a lot of the ART's out with random duties. That's not the case anymore. All of our Lt's coming back from UPT are landing jobs with the regionals. The workload has gone up. Our O-4/5's are doing admin duties an E-3 should be doing and the flying mission suffers from it. TR's are not participating as much because we're shoving PACOM and CENTCOM rotations down their throats every year. ART's fill a lot of our flying schedule to keep the flights from cancelling. People are done and one by one, our ART's are leaving for the airlines. Even AGR's are thinking about leaving before 20. I've passed up 2 AGR opportunities in the past year to remain a free agent for when I get my call. They've thrown around the idea of offering ART's a bonus, but nothing official has materialized and honestly, they're about 5 yrs too late. Most of the legacy companies first year pay is $75-80k with 2nd year pay around $110k; to WORK LESS! That's a lot more attractive than it used to be. Another thing most people don't realize is that ART's hired after Jan '14 now pay 4.4% into their FERS instead of the .8% it used to be before 2013. Figure out how much of your money is going into paying your own pension when you retire. $4,500 per year ON TOP of the TSP. This compared to Brand X doing a 16% direct deposit 401k. If I was a brand new Lt out of UPT, I'd probably go for a GS-13 time just so I could fly my arse off at the unit, upgrade to AC/IP in as short of time I could and go to a major, but even then... I'd probably get to a major faster if I got hired with a regional and flew 1,000 hrs per year. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

I really don't think the ops tempo and climate was as bad then as it is now, but I could be mistaken. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk