Flight Pay increases

[Whitman]

$50 increase for the senior pilots/IP/EPs that have been flying their asses off in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and HOA?  That's like tipping your barber $1 after she spends 30-45 min cutting your hair. Might as well keep your $1 and go down to the BX barber if you can't afford the quality haircut.

Also, CSAF needs to take the reigns on communicating anything related to pilot retention.  He does much better than the others.  This is a PR nightmare and casts a negative perception to the pilot retention crisis, as HAF is calling it.  CSAF needs to communicate pilots that this is not in any way a measure of retention for the guys punching at initial UPT ADSC completion. Be honest and tell us that this is to incentivize the 14yr officer to stay 20 to retirement (because that's the only thing it does). 

[pawnman]

On 8/29/2017 at 10:27 AM, 3PAARO said:

in 2013, the CAF DT asked the ACC/A3 point blank about instituting a flying-only career track...he proceeded to defecate all over the idea.."not in my Air Force!". It's in the transition from O-6 to O-7 that people lose their minds. 

To be honest, I don't think we really need a fly-only track and a leadership track.  We just need to stop punishing people who end up flying the line on promotion boards.  At a time when we can't fill cockpits, we're still not promoting the very guys we need to fill the cockpits - the senior, grey beard IP/EP (or, in my case, IW/EW) who has deployed multiple times, worked in safety, worked in stan/eval, etc.  These are THE experts that the commanders lean on for flying knowledge, and they're essentially being told they are less valuable due to not going to staff...even though we're also telling them they can't go to staff because there aren't enough people to fill the cockpits.

I get that the shiniest pennies will go to school followed by staff...but that's only your top 10-20%.  What should be of far greater concern, to both us on the line and the Air Force as a whole, is what do you do with the other 80-90%?

[pilotguy]

Saw this on Facebook just thought I'd share here

 

Some interesting numbers for y'all. I'm looking at the "over 6 years" number because that's the age group the Air Force should be laser focused on...

Over 6 flight pay has changed 4 times since inception. In 1981 it was raised 24.9% from 245 to 306. THE VERY NEXT year it was raised another 30.1% up to 400. In 1990 the 650 amount went into effect after a HUGE 62.5% raise.......

27 years later, in the middle of the biggest pilot shortage in the history of the military they raised it 7.7%......

In 1990 the flight pay was worth 22.3% of your base pay. To me that means the Air Force valued flyers 22.3% higher than "regular" officers. That number after this raise is down to 10.2%

The AF so far is doing a terrible job of showing pilots they are valued. Period. The numbers don't lie

[war007afa]

2 hours ago, pilotguy said:

Saw this on Facebook just thought I'd share here

 

Some interesting numbers for y'all. I'm looking at the "over 6 years" number because that's the age group the Air Force should be laser focused on...

Over 6 flight pay has changed 4 times since inception. In 1981 it was raised 24.9% from 245 to 306. THE VERY NEXT year it was raised another 30.1% up to 400. In 1990 the 650 amount went into effect after a HUGE 62.5% raise.......

27 years later, in the middle of the biggest pilot shortage in the history of the military they raised it 7.7%......

In 1990 the flight pay was worth 22.3% of your base pay. To me that means the Air Force valued flyers 22.3% higher than "regular" officers. That number after this raise is down to 10.2%

The AF so far is doing a terrible job of showing pilots they are valued. Period. The numbers don't lie

Especially considering the percentage of promotes in rated career fields isn't anywhere close to 22.3% higher (in fact, about 4% lower)...

[BADFNZ]

$50 raise?

 

[dream big]

7 hours ago, pawnman said:

To be honest, I don't think we really need a fly-only track and a leadership track.  We just need to stop punishing people who end up flying the line on promotion boards.  At a time when we can't fill cockpits, we're still not promoting the very guys we need to fill the cockpits - the senior, grey beard IP/EP (or, in my case, IW/EW) who has deployed multiple times, worked in safety, worked in stan/eval, etc.  These are THE experts that the commanders lean on for flying knowledge, and they're essentially being told they are less valuable due to not going to staff...even though we're also telling them they can't go to staff because there aren't enough people to fill the cockpits.

I get that the shiniest pennies will go to school followed by staff...but that's only your top 10-20%.  What should be of far greater concern, to both us on the line and the Air Force as a whole, is what do you do with the other 80-90%?

Valid points, I'm lucky to be in a squadron now where the commander values those types and empowers them to run OPS in the squadron instead of penalizing them for not wanting to be an 0-7..but I have also seen combat tested experienced EP/WO types thrown on the sidewalk for not wanting to play the game.  I do feel that a defined track system would help fix many of the issues we gripe about here if not the actual pilot shortage; because at the end of the day, we can all agree that uncertainty and lack of control in our lives as AF officers is one of the greatest morale killers.

Edited August 31, 2017 by dream big

[osulax05]

Splitting rated officers from the LAF below O-6 would probably negate the need for two tracks. It would alsokeep random MSG clowns from passing over WOs, SEFEs, etc for not checking all the right boxes. 

[tac airlifter]

22 minutes ago, osulax05 said:

Splitting rated officers from the LAF below O-6 would probably negate the need for two tracks. It would alsokeep random MSG clowns from passing over WOs, SEFEs, etc for not checking all the right boxes. 

Regarding your second sentence, why do you assume that to be true?  

[osulax05]

My assumption is that if rated folks split from the LAF, only rated officers would sit on their promotion board. No guarantee that all rated officers would value "the right things" but it sure couldn't hurt.

Edited August 31, 2017 by osulax05

[pawnman]

1 hour ago, tac airlifter said:

Regarding your second sentence, why do you assume that to be true?  

Which part?  The assumption that it would help, or the assumption that MSG officers are outperforming rated officers on promotion boards?  Because you only need to look at the promotion statistics to verify the second one.  

If rated bubbas were only competing against other rated bubbas, you wouldn't have to worry about competing with the SFS commander or the CE DO on the promotion boards.  For whatever reason, our promotion boards just see "Led hundreds of people" and drool, but see "led xx combat missions, employed YY weapons" and yawn.  They are entirely different skills, and both require judgement, discipline, and training...but at the end of the day, you're comparing apples to zebras on the promotion board, and the rated officers are the ones drawing the short end of the stick.

[tac airlifter]

1 hour ago, pawnman said:

Which part?  

To clarify, I don't understand the persistent assumption that seperating rated from LAF would result in higher promotion rates for rated officers.  Is there any evidence this proposed action would achieve the intended result?   Or are you assuming the rated board would be allocated a higher number of officer positions?   Because the total number of officers promoted would remain unchanged.

[LookieRookie]

4 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

Regarding your second sentence, why do you assume that to be true?  

I'll give my anecdote. I went to a AFGSC/A1 mock MLR and was one of the handful of rated dudes. The  non-rated O-6/O-5s asked what MDS/MWS/a lot of flying acronyms meant. So to think the O-6s are going to be the ones scoring the records that they can't comprehend. 

 

As of now, it's on rated writers to draft a PRF for the lowest common denominator.

[SurelySerious]

1 hour ago, LookieRookie said:

I'll give my anecdote. I went to a AFGSC/A1 mock MLR and was one of the handful of rated dudes. The  non-rated O-6/O-5s asked what MDS/MWS/a lot of flying acronyms meant. So to think the O-6s are going to be the ones scoring the records that they can't comprehend. 

 

As of now, it's on rated writers to draft a PRF for the lowest common denominator.

Which feeds further into the double secret decoder ring. 

[pawnman]

2 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

To clarify, I don't understand the persistent assumption that seperating rated from LAF would result in higher promotion rates for rated officers.  Is there any evidence this proposed action would achieve the intended result?   Or are you assuming the rated board would be allocated a higher number of officer positions?   Because the total number of officers promoted would remain unchanged.

If the rated officers were split from non-rated officers, it wouldn't take long to establish quotas for each.  We've already split medical/dental/JAG from Line of the Air Force.  This has the added bonus, as LookieRookie pointed out, that rated officers would score rated officer records instead of MSG/MDG/MXG colonels who can't spell CAOC or JDAM.

[Hotel]

I am surprised no one has mentioned that the whole "raise" is even less appealing when considering that flight pay is taxed. So that $50 and $150 dollar raise, take about 15-30% off depending on your bracket (probably over-simplified percentages).

I calculated out that my $30k bonus for 4 years ($120k) is really just a 3 year bonus as the 4th year goes to pay the taxes (net about $22k per year x 4 = $88k versus the full $120k).

 

Edited September 3, 2017 by Hotel