Gazmo

I would also say it depends on whether we are talking AD or ARC. Reserve/Guard CC's tend to participate more in the flying schedule; at least in the tanker world.

Putting pilot wings on? Not sure about that. Most enlisted crewmembers take pride in their enlisted crew position and probably wouldn't want to "impersonate" a pilot. Sure there's more to the story on that one. As far as enlisted crew members not saluting Pilots, in a lot of crew airplanes where officers and enlisted crew members work together, go TDY together, live together in some cases, for days or months on end, you get pretty close and the relationship gets less formal. Is it right? By military professional standards, probably not, but when I trust that enlisted member with my life during certain phases of the mission, as long as everyone on the crew understands their roles and responsibilities while executing that mission, I don't mind it. I have, however, experienced some enlisted crew members abusing that "privilege" and allowed it to degrade the mission, which is where it crosses the line and needs to be address. It is a fine art to turn the professionalism and formalities on and off. Some people can do it and some don't know when to tighten it up. It can also cause some anomosity amongst the non-flying enlisted core because they see how well enlisted flyers are treated by the officers. Again, you need to have the SA to know when to turn it on and off.

I am just guessing, but I would imagine the F-35 goes into some kind of low-speed maneuvering mode with the gear down. Keep in mind we routinely do AR in the KC-135 at 190-200 knots with Hogs and Hercs at 250k lbs with some flaps. Pretty close to min maneuver at those weights.

I guess I learned something from AMIC.

Since the fuel is still leaking and assuming this pic was taken shortly after the incident, I would imagine the tank on the left wing separated on impact with the ground or soon there after with a prop blade coming off the #1 engine. The right side was probably strictly F-35 damage. Just my opinion, of course.

I wonder how much the Marine Corps are going to have to compensate that farmer for HAZMAT'ing his field.

Supurb job. It's nice to see when people do some "pilot $hit" and live to tell about it.

Buying back time isn't very cost effective for officers. It's great if you were an enlisted troop and you land a GS-12 or 13 job, but for officers it's pretty expensive and with the FERS being such a dismal program these days (it's changed quite a bit in the last 7-8 years with ART's having to contribute 4+% into their FERS pot now instead of .8%). With that and the fact that the longevity of a pilot in an ART job generally being quite low, you're better off forgetting about it and cashing out your FERS pot when you separate the program.

New pay tables are great. Pilot bonus is in addition to locality. You're looking at $120-150k /yr from Step 1 - 7. They'd be real stupid to try to go the other way on the tables due to COVID. This little road bump in airline hiring isn't going to last very long. By the time we know it, it'll be in full swing again.

I think when we see the international market open back up travel going to explode. When it comes to the big three a lot of the domestic travel are connections to International locations. Parking hundreds of widebodies is what's killing us. This isn't just people leaving the states and coming back but people coming into the states and going back to whatever country they live in. That's huge. This isn't because everyone's afraid to travel it's because governments have shut the travel down. Now we all know things aren't going to open back up as quickly as they were shut down so yeah it's going to take a while, but I think if a lot of countries decided tomorrow that they were going to open everything back up again we'd see travel shoot up tremendously because people are ready to get back to normal life. There are a lot of young people out there who couldn't give a rats ass about COVID and are ready to travel. Not saying that's smart btw... As far as business travel goes, yeah maybe some of it won't come back I'm sure there's enough of you who have been teleworking over the past 6 months to be annoyed with it already. I know I am. I've been after unit on days during this pandemic trying teleworks and it just isn't like doing it in person. For a lot of people the benefits of business travel are what attracts them to whatever job they do. Granted a lot of people probably don't like traveling for their job and being away from their family but for others they probably love to travel and would rather be doing that instead of sitting in front of a laptop looking at a 14 inch screen teleworking. With 3 billion people watching Youtube and porn, the internet and teleworking technology isn't exactly perfect all of the time.

In the grand scheme of things even though no one really cares that you got commendables there is value in documenting commendables and downgrades when it comes to tracking trends. Remember these things get sent to your MAJCOM in your SEB minutes. We should be adjusting our training tables appropriately to address common weak areas and we can't really do that without documentation. So if you're in evaluator, please don't think you're just blowing smoke up someone's ass for giving them a commendable and don't think that just debriefing a downgrade is doing everyone Justice. At the end of the day an airline isn't going to give two s***'s about someone getting a downgrade for a substandard tanker rendezvous. I know many people who have gotten hired with airlines with a Q-3 in their FEF (maybe not at Delta).

For the most part, noone cares. However, there may be a time in your career where you may apply to a job where they will actually read through your FEF (Guard/Reserve unit). So keep being a good pilot. It may help you one day.

It's all gonna come back folks. Doom and gloom gets the best of us, but air travel is coming back and I think it will come back strong. This was definitely a pretty big and unexpected speedbump that will probably cause Big Blue to get cocky again, but the hiring wave will return. Maybe not this year, but it won't be a 9/11 type event where some of us waited over a decade to get hired by a Legacy. People are done with this $hit. They're ready to get out and go to Disney World. Airfare is cheaper than ever. As long as we can fend off a second wave of COVID in the Fall, we'll push into the winter with a vaccine on the horizon.

64" used to be the standing height requirement without a waiver. I forget what the min sitting height was. There were also butt-to-knee and armspan measurements taken on me at Brooks at the time and apparently they took those from people that didn't meet the height requirements. Wright-Patt was working on an anthropometrics database at the time, which could basically spit out which aircraft you could fly based on your measurements. Most of the fighters were "marginal" for me, but the T-38 was "red", which of course prevented me from getting to any of the fighters. Oddly enough, all of the heavies were green. Again, this was for being .3" too short on standing height (63.7"). I met the sitting height requirement.

You serious Clark? Wow... I went through hell trying to get a height waiver 17 some odd years ago. This was after I passed my FC1, got commissioned and then DQ'd at Brooks for being .3" too short on my standing height. Got the waiver, but it took 4 months and wound up getting Heavy-tracked from Day 1. So... you can be 4'10" and go to UPT?

Ugh. Looks like they recognized power loss and tried to get some altitude.

You would "think" that, but these are pilots making $350k+ a year to work how much to begin with? We shall see. It would be real nice to know how many pilots the company needs to take these deals or even better; how many at each base in each piece of equipment. Obviously in the short-term, it helps the company if more senior people take this deal. Higher salaries means more payrole savings. Long term, the Jr guys under 20% who would be on the hitlist for furlough would rather be at 55 hrs of pay than 0. I can "live" off 55 hrs 2nd year Airbus pay, especially with guard income, but going to 0 wouldn't do me very well.

Good insight. Thanks. Ironically I hadn't seen the email from APA about the AAL LOA last night before I wrote that. I am a little less anxious about the future now there seems to be some relief, at least short term. I just hope things don't get worse. As far as 55 hr SIL's; I haven't read through our contract yet, but what's the general policy for being on a paid leave of absence and doing mil duty? I am assuming inactive duty is as any other. What about a deployment during your paid leave? You would have to convert that to a mil leave?

Well boys, it was fun while it lasted; just over a year for me. Just enough to get a taste of the "good life". You really can't make this shit up, can you? It's right out of a movie. Words cannot describe how happy I've been since I landed my first airline job. I know a lot of you felt the same. Well, last week before the shit really hit the fan, I had enough intuition to start procuring my full-time job back at the unit because I just knew this wasn't going to go well. Hopefully the odds (and my experience) are in my favor, but it'll be interesting to see what the future holds since I've showed my cards. I've walked around the house all weekend like a zombie thinking "f#ck my life", but I have to push forward. I hope everyone in the same situation the best. I really don't know what else to say.

So... how about all those ART bonuses, GS pilot payscale increases and AGR conversions... [emoji849]

Not sure what facts you base your theories on, but most of the airlines pre-9/11 were on the edge of bankruptcy without 9/11. They were flying large, inefficient (empty) airplanes around. Oil prices went up significantly between 99-13 before falling off. We are in different times. This may turn out to be a speed bump toward the inevitable; another hiring "boom" when this all settles down. Retirements are what they are and not going to change. Some companies are losing 70 pilots per month in retirements. These are all pilots in the 12+ year payscales and theoretically the highest paid pilots in their company. With salaries and associated bennies, a company losing 70 pilots per month can save $20+ million per month in salaries and benefits alone by just freezing hiring. That is 1/4 of a billion dollars in a years time. Furloughs save money in the long run, but they also cost a company money so there has to be a break even point. You furlough off the bottom; the lowest paid pilots. At some point that drives retraining. How much does it cost to bring a furloughed pilot back through indoc and an initial qual program? I have no idea. $100,000 per pilot maybe? You furlough 1,500 pilots only to have to retrain them all when we bounce back. That's at least $100-150 million in training costs. I am no airline financial wizard, but common sense says there is a breakeven point for a furlough and I don't think we are at the point yet where we need to go down that road. This is just me trying to see some light at the end of the tunnel after a few beers.

Yes, Aircrew Training/HARM. HARM will put it in your flying records. When I was a training officer, I'd keep a copy of the certificates in the individuals file as a backup.

The media is more dangerous than any virus. They take a close second behind nuclear weapons in capability to destroy the planet and they don't give a rat's ass as long as dumb people are sitting on their couches eating up the BS they are reporting. We had A terrible common flu season this year. I want about two decades without getting the flu and I got it this year. I know at least a dozen people who also got it around me. The death rate for Coronavirus just slightly worse than the common flu and mainly for the elderly.

Are you insinuating this is what caused this accident?

Lots of units doing it. It has its advantages here and there.