Flight Time

[Polar Bear]

Do full time pilots in the guard/reserve fly more than AD? I was talking to an Apache pilot in the Army Guard and was blown away at how much he flew a week. 

[stlpilot11]

8 hours ago, Polar Bear said:

Do full time pilots in the guard/reserve fly more than AD? I was talking to an Apache pilot in the Army Guard and was blown away at how much he flew a week. 

 This is a very case by case thing. Depends on mission, unit funding, manning, so many factors. It's possible. 

[brabus]

Shack on above. But I’d say as a general statement in the fighter world at least, you’re flying way more in the guard as a Maj/Lt Col than your peers on AD. Probably a wash at the Lt/Capt level. Once you hit O-4 on AD, Fly less and plan more parties/be an exec/go to school/wing king’s butt boy for some bullshit personal project…OR go to the guard at the end of your UPT ADSC. Tough choice.

[Polar Bear]

On 6/17/2023 at 7:55 AM, brabus said:

Shack on above. But I’d say as a general statement in the fighter world at least, you’re flying way more in the guard as a Maj/Lt Col than your peers on AD. Probably a wash at the Lt/Capt level. Once you hit O-4 on AD, Fly less and plan more parties/be an exec/go to school/wing king’s butt boy for some bullshit personal project…OR go to the guard at the end of your UPT ADSC. Tough choice.

How many flights are AD peeps getting a month roughly?

[hindsight2020]

I flew a lot more in my original MWS compared to my AD peers, as a trougher. Mainly the way we structured sorties availed itself to being able to fly twice as many sorties a week. As opposed to the byzantine way AD did things, where they devoted an entire day to mission planning, for rinse and repeat flagpole CONUS training sorties. Yes, AD would retort they had a much more green force, which in their eyes required the mission planning day for the self-loading baggage's duty position training. I concede the former premise, but reject the latter.

In any event, it was a significant difference too, as I ended up going to AC upgrade with about 3 times the flight time as my AD peers, being the youngest in rank of the lot (and the only O-2 in the class). n=1 and all that jazz.

All in all, I have some regrets, but going ARC baby for a career is not one of them. I've left a lot of money on the table compared to AD, but I've generally flown my ass off for the past 17 years. Especially the last 7 once I became an O-4 when compared to my peers (long ago O-5s by now, while I endure the paycut as an O-4 in a controlled grade AGR and not in the short list for the O-5 AGR cool kids queue). So I just made my wife an RN and stopped worrying about it lol.

 

[brabus]

17 hours ago, Polar Bear said:

How many flights are AD peeps getting a month roughly?

Assuming not much has changed (fighter world), most O-4/O-5 are maybe getting 5x month. Their guard counterparts are doubling that in many cases. Even the part time guard guys fly more than their AD counterparts a lot of the time. That’s a very general statement, and there are obviously some people on both sides who don’t fit this mold.