"Banked pilot"? 1990s

[Steve Davies]

I read a report recently in which an officer wrote that he graduated ENJJPT in the early 1990s and was designated a 'banked pilot'. He then did seven months of school cross-training to Intel. I don't know if he returned to the cockpit.

Can anyone say whether such a categorisation was either common or permanent? Seems odd to spend so much money training someone who then ends up doing a completely different job.

[Learjetter]

I commissioned in the early 90s: Lots of my classmates were sent to pilot training then "banked", and many of us ROTC guys were "recategorized"--given the opportunity to train in a different AFSC then attend pilot training at the 3 year of service point. Banked pilots wore wings but went from UPT to another training course (Mx, Wx, Aquisitions, Command Post, etc) until a training slot in their assigned MWS opened up. Another program was the KC-135 third pilot: getting sent to a -135 unit as a pilot, but not qualifying in the 135, but riding along as a third crewmember. Getting banked was generally preferred over recat. Most of us waited a year from commissioning to enter AD. Recat put us "behind" our classmates in terms of earning flight pay, upgrading to IP before our MAJ board, etc. But, gave us a perspective on other aspects of the Air Force. We liken it to doing our "career broadening" assignment first. PM for details.

Fly safe!

[Chapter29]

It was common--not sure how long the program continued. I was one in one of the first Laughlin classes that banked guys. I remember when the O-6 from personnel walked into our flight room to brief us--right after most of us had passed our T-38 form check. He said half of us would not have a plane to climb into when we graduated. 8 of our 16 got banked. Of those banked, most went and interviewed with Gaurd/Reserve units and were picked up. The rest waited the year and got back into flying.

[Crog]

Steve,

I was in the second (or third) UPT class to go through "banking" in the summer/fall of 1991. This was a result in an overall reduction of available cockpits, and the concept was to put UPT grads in a "pool" by MWS type ("Tanker", "Airlift" or "Fighter") which they could "choose" on assignment night depending on their class rank. The history went something like this: Early in T-37's, a rumor floated that ~10% would have to wait as long as 6 months to start follow on FTU. By the time we started -38's, the number was ~25% would have to wait a year. On assignment night, it was 65% of my class "banked" and the delay ended up being about 2+ years. During that time, the "banked" pilot would be assigned a support function at a like base until returning for requal(The "banked tanker" pilot would go be a MX officer at Minot, for example).

I could probably write a book about all the memories of this period: We stopped calling "Unsat" rides "Tacos", and humorously referred to them as "Bank Tanked". The Navy had the same problem the USAF did, but chose instead to lop off the bottom 35% of it's students and send them home (the USAF system didn't seem that bad then!). Since we had no idea what the final "banking" percent would be, it didn't really affect how our class behaved with each other. We still stayed cohesive, and were learning very early that "the Air Force cares for it's people, just not you".

The controversial part of this was how class ranking was determined. If I recall correctly, 30% was academic test, 30% was daily grades, and 30% were checkrides. The remaining 10% was the arbitrary T-38 "Flight Commander Rating". Well, at first glance you would think that was a pretty fair system, except when the data got crunched on the first 3 areas, after a year of "highs" and "lows", the spread between #1 and #23 was about 2%. So, the FC's final rating basically determined who got airplanes, and which airplanes they got.

This is good if you have a solid, stable T-38 FC, but if you happened to have a frustrated "fighter pilot wannabee" KC-135 pilot who loses his solo on the Wing, then yells at him over the radio while center is trying to get the FC back in his area ("I'm not lost, you're lost!"), or brings the solo on the Wing back through the WX to mins, or discusses working on your crosscheck by driving your car around the local high school playing field checking out all the underage tail while eating McDonald's, or openly discusses how he's using his bonus money to give his wife a "bigger rack" while she's standing next to him at the formal dining in, then comments on the student having martial problems "I wouldn't have gotten a KC-135 if it wasn't for my wife", well then, in these examples I've just TOTALLY made up, it's not so good.

With this kind of freak, a solid guy with exceptional skills might find himself a MX officer at McChord because he didn't charm the FC at the last flight cookout. An below-average skill guy who just so happened to join a golf league with the FC ends up #3. The good news was that by the time the "banked" pilots were ready to return to the cockpit, the pendulum had swung the other way and they rapidly progressed along their career tracks. I don't know of any who were hurt in the long run, and the smart ones who got their masters actually returned ahead of the lucky few who got "real planes".

And for the record, I was one of the lucky few. And no, I don't play golf.

Edited April 4, 2010 by Crog

[Prosuper]

For all you pilots that got banked and became mx officers, how did you endure your time in mx before going back to requal? Was it eye opening to see the other side of the debrief table? Did it help as you progressed during your career? Just curious from a Crew Chief that had a few banked pilots in my section during the early 90's.

The early 90's was not very fun after Desert Storm from the mx side, VSI/SSB early retirements gutted alot of experiance on the active duty side which made for more long days if you were the only 7 level.

[ClearedHot]

Steve,

The controversial part of this was how class ranking was determined. If I recall correctly, 30% was academic test, 30% was daily grades, and 30% were checkrides. The remaining 10% was the arbitrary T-38 "Flight Commander Rating". Well, at first glance you would think that was a pretty fair system, except when the data got crunched on the first 3 areas, after a year of "highs" and "lows", the spread between #1 and #23 was about 2%. So, the FC's final rating basically determined who got airplanes, and which airplanes they got.

This is good if you have a solid, stable T-38 FC, but if you happened to have a frustrated "fighter pilot wannabee" KC-135 pilot who loses his solo on the Wing, then yells at him over the radio while center is trying to get the FC back in his area ("I'm not lost, you're lost!"), or brings the solo on the Wing back through the WX to mins, or discusses working on your crosscheck by driving your car around the local high school playing field checking out all the underage tail while eating McDonald's, or openly discusses how he's using his bonus money to give his wife a "bigger rack" while she's standing next to him at the formal dining in, then comments on the student having martial problems "I wouldn't have gotten a KC-135 if it wasn't for my wife", well then, in these examples I've just TOTALLY made up, it's not so good.

With this kind of freak, a solid guy with exceptional skills might find himself a MX officer at McChord because he didn't charm the FC at the last flight cookout. An below-average skill guy who just so happened to join a golf league with the FC ends up #3. The good news was that by the time the "banked" pilots were ready to return to the cockpit, the pendulum had swung the other way and they rapidly progressed along their career tracks. I don't know of any who were hurt in the long run, and the smart ones who got their masters actually returned ahead of the lucky few who got "real planes".

And for the record, I was one of the lucky few. And no, I don't play golf.

Absolutely correct...the points spread in my class was less than 1% and the Flight Commander ranking decided EVERYTHING. We had a Capt in our class who ended up finishing #1 solely for that reason. He was a good, but there was a 2Lt who was better and crushed him on all checkrides, but the FC lined it up so the Capt would finish first. A few months after graduating we found out the FC and the dude who graduated #1 flew together when the Capt was a Nav. In fact, they were on hard crew for a while, their wives were friends, neither one said a word...absolute bullshit. The guy who should have finished #1 wanted a B-52, loved the plane since he was a kid...none available at the #2 pick so he took a KC-10, served 8 years and got out, (#1 guy took a B-1). I didn't play golf and did not get along with my FC. I think I was #6 in T-37's and performed even better in T-38's..."E" on every FORM ride, "O" my checkride and still went to a banked job for almost three years. My class got creamed by the bank...no fighters for active duty guys and only six flying assignments for 19 active folks (3 guard, 1 reserve).

It was common--not sure how long the program continued. I was one in one of the first Laughlin classes that banked guys. I remember when the O-6 from personnel walked into our flight room to brief us--right after most of us had passed our T-38 form check. He said half of us would not have a plane to climb into when we graduated. 8 of our 16 got banked. Of those banked, most went and interviewed with Gaurd/Reserve units and were picked up. The rest waited the year and got back into flying.

If only...The first banked classes graduated in Mid-August as I recall...by the time I graduated in October they decided to take the Palace Chase option off the table...without telling us. I was hired by Jacksonville after traveling on my own dime only to have my Palace Chase package disapproved afterwards because "they we loosing too many folks" and were going to end up with a shortage in my year group in the out years.

The irony after all the non-sense with the banking gig, my year group was decimated by the program. When my year group was up for the bonus we were told the USAF needed 64% of our year group to stay for the USAF to break even, I think the final number was 28%. Of my class of 23, only 4 are still in at the 19 year point.

For all you pilots that got banked and became mx officers, how did you endure your time in mx before going back to requal? Was it eye opening to see the other side of the debrief table? Did it help as you progressed during your career? Just curious from a Crew Chief that had a few banked pilots in my section during the early 90's.

The early 90's was not very fun after Desert Storm from the mx side, VSI/SSB early retirements gutted alot of experiance on the active duty side which made for more long days if you were the only 7 level.

I learned a lot...mainly about people and yes it did help me through the rest of my career. However, there were challenges....many MX officers hated us and saw us as just "passing through", so they did not want to give us meaningful jobs. I had one nasty bitch tell me I was "diluting her career field"...she was pissed because I was selected to be an AMU/OIC as a 1Lt and she felt they had "skipped" her as a Capt.

The real joy was working with the enlisted folks. Most really cared about the planes and were absolutely dedicated to "their" planes. I had a superb Chief as my Prosuper, he taught me the ropes of the flightline and kept me out of trouble. It was somewhat ironic that on the day I took command of a squadron, I still was not supervising as many people as I did when I was a Capt AMU/OIC.

Can anyone say whether such a categorisation was either common or permanent? Seems odd to spend so much money training someone who then ends up doing a completely different job.

By law it was not supposed to exceed three years, because you had to get your first flying gate. It was odd, but they knew they were going to have a problem in the out years. My class of 23 was replaced by a class of 5 and they were all guard and reserve. The 1990-1993 rated year groups are a mess because of the decisions they made back then. I saw a stat in 2003 that said the 1991 year group only had 13 F-16 pilots left in it...12 years after graduating it was destroyed by the low-retention which led to the big bonuses our classes got. The only thing that saved the USAF was 9/11 and what it did to the airlines, had that not happened I think they would have been forced to extend the stop-loss.

[Chapter29]

If only...The first banked classes graduated in Mid-August as I recall...by the time I graduated in October they decided to take the Palace Chase option off the table...without telling us. I was hired by Jacksonville after traveling on my own dime only to have my Palace Chase package disapproved afterwards because "they we loosing too many folks" and were going to end up with a shortage in my year group in the out years.

I think they actually felt bad telling us so close to graduation. The guys banked in my class could go to another job (they could even work their own job!), go to the guard or reserve, or even SEPARATE from the AF after graduation. Talk about money down the drain. No one walked away, but pretty amazing. Now that you mention it, I do remember it being three year, not one.

[Hacker]

For all you pilots that got banked and became mx officers, how did you endure your time in mx before going back to requal? Was it eye opening to see the other side of the debrief table? Did it help as you progressed during your career? Just curious from a Crew Chief that had a few banked pilots in my section during the early 90's.

The early 90's was not very fun after Desert Storm from the mx side, VSI/SSB early retirements gutted alot of experiance on the active duty side which made for more long days if you were the only 7 level.

Of note is that the mid 90s brought the opposite situation -- those who were in ROTC when the bankings were taking place ended up getting sent somewhere other than UPT, then in the late 90s they significantly increased the UPT slots that were open to active duty.

Today, you have an entire generation of pilots who were trained in (and performed a tour in) a non-flying AFSC. Lots of MX-officers-turned-pilots in the O-4 and O-5 ranks currently.

[60 driver]

Steve,

It occurs to me (again) that I'm getting old, since it's not the first time I've been surprised to hear these questions asked. I've heard the same ones recently from young LTs, and the first couple of times I did, I guess I looked at them funny, until I realized that all this happened almost 20 years ago. Hard to believe. Kind of the equivalent of expecting a 23 year old me to know what the assignment process was like during Vietnam.

ClearedHot and Crog covered a lot, but I don't remember seeing this mentioned, although it's probably obvious. The reason the banked pilot program came into existence to begin with was due to the massive defense cuts after the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the Gramm-Rudman bill. At least from my perspective at the time, it was not in any way a forward-looking program. It was a very reactive, last ditch effort by the Air Force to prevent the UPT program from being decimated. As best I can describe it, the flesh peddlers knew even then there would be a pilot shortage by the late '90's. At the same time, although they knew that in the short term the number of UPT students now greatly exceeded the number of available cockpits, they couldn't just cut the student production to zero and still hope to have a viable UPT program X years later. So the banked guys became the shock absorber, with the intent of A) maintaining the UPT program, and B) hopefully providing a "bank" of rapidly retrainable pilots when demand resumed. I'm sure at least a few here have both a better memory and narrative skills than I do, but that is what I was able to drag out of the depths. I will add that if the concept seems confusing now, it was very much so to us (or me, at least) at the time as well. When I graduated UPT in 1992, our time in the bank was estimated to be 2.5 years. That turned out to be just about spot on for me.

Like Crog, I could talk for hours on the subject, but I won't other than to say that a lot of guys had problems coming back from the bank, and a lot of guys just chose not to. The AF provided a lot of us a very effective tool to figure out what was really important, even if they didn't quite do it on purpose or with our best interests in mind. I have some just weird stories from being banked, but I'm not sure they'd add much other than what ClearedHot mentioned earlier, so I'll shut up now.

edit: I answered a question in this forum a while back about whether banked pilots were handicapped in their careers afterwards. My short answer was I didn't think so, but these links will answer that question better than I did.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts131/interview_dutton.html'>http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts131/interview_dutton.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts131/

Edited April 5, 2010 by 60 driver

[Hacker]

was not in any way a forward-looking program. It was a very reactive, last ditch effort by the Air Force

So, in other words, is was just like every other personnel action the AF has planned and executed in the last 25 years.

[60 driver]

So, in other words, is was just like every other personnel action the AF has planned and executed in the last 25 years.

Pretty much, except I'd replace the number with 50.

Edited April 5, 2010 by 60 driver

[Steve Davies]

Gents, thanks very much for the very detailed and informative replies. Much appreciated

[Stitch]

... The early 90's was not very fun after Desert Storm from the mx side, VSI/SSB early retirements gutted alot of experiance on the active duty side which made for more long days if you were the only 7 level.

A-men brother! Leadership expected all the slugs to take the money and run when it was just the opposite. Many talented guys bailed and we were left with a vacuum of knowledge in the middle ranks (SSgt-TSgt).

Nothing like being a weapons load crew chief with zero experience on a given MDS and being given two fresh from the schoolhouse three-level kids for a load crew and being expected to train said kids on the jet when you don't know squat about it yourself. Gotta love those 12+ hour days!

INFO NOTE: Weapons guys can work anything with a gun/wepaons system we're not "locked" into any given MDS like some other MX AFSCs. You could PCS 5 times and work 5 different aircraft.