Aviation Continuation Pay (ACP - The Bonus)

[goingkinetic]

The solution is simple. Prioritize people who can 7 day opt over OG number 1's when it comes to the assignment process.

People are getting out because the rich are getting richer in the assignment process and signing a commitment for 9 years to suck up bad deals seems like a bad choice when there are are guard and airline options beginning to develop.

All of the guard bro's I've been talking to are saying there are good full-time ART opportunities as older guys filter back to the airlines. Without significant financial incentive, around 50k per year, I don't see many fence sitters willing to jump on AFPC's assignment that's the equivalent of the proverbial fat chick.

[Prozac]

How about 5 year commitments and make working conditions such that people actually want to stay in longer. No bonus needed. Problem solved.

[TnkrToad]

The solution is simple. Prioritize people who can 7 day opt over OG number 1's when it comes to the assignment process.

People are getting out because the rich are getting richer in the assignment process and signing a commitment for 9 years to suck up bad deals seems like a bad choice when there are are guard and airline options beginning to develop.

All of the guard bro's I've been talking to are saying there are good full-time ART opportunities as older guys filter back to the airlines. Without significant financial incentive, around 50k per year, I don't see many fence sitters willing to jump on AFPC's assignment that's the equivalent of the proverbial fat chick.

I think you're right on with the assignment process being a huge factor. Here’s an interesting thought experiment on the effectiveness of the pilot bonus:

- Assumption: The bonus is only effective to the extent that the take rate exceeds 35%

o 25% of a year group are bright and shiny, future O-6 types who will stay in anyway because as part of the ubermensch, they figure their futures are golden. No bonus required in order to retain

o 10% are slugs or gluttons for punishment—regardless, they don’t have a great future, but still have little incentive to get out. Again, no bonus required for retention

Looking at the fighter types, which (thus far) have a 47.3% take rate from 281 eligibles. By my logic:

- 70 (25%) are striver types who didn’t need the bonus to stay in

- 28 (10%) are slugs/gluttons who, again, didn’t need the bonus to stay in

- The striver types will be protected from the bad deals (they almost invariably are) and the slugs shouldn’t be sent to hard-to-fills. Logic: if that hard-to-fill deployment is important enough to take a fighter pilot out of his cockpit to fill, I’d hope it’s important enough to send someone that won’t screw it up

- That then means that Big Blue effectively just spent $28,025,000 (the total obligated for fighter pilot bonuses thus far) to convince the 35 notional fence-sitters (folks good enough to have options, but not bought into the leadership track) to stay in, and in doing so, accept that they’ll likely get screwed for the latter half of their respective careers

- Works out to over $800k apiece to allow Big Blue to fill those hard-to-fill billets

If my logic is correct, Big Blue didn’t get anything out of offering the bonus to the RPA pilots. Only 4/13 took (30.8%) took the bait:

- 2 or 3 of those are bright and shiny types

- 1 or 2 are slug/glutton/gonna stay in no matter what types

- Bad news is it was a waste of money—Big Blue got no more people to fill hard-to-fill billets than they would have without offering the bonus at all

- Good news is that they only spent $500k for RPA pilot bonuses this year—less than the cost to keep one fighter pilot fence-sitter!

Given how much we’ve paid to retain the fence-sitters, I sure hope the hard-to-fill billets are really worth filling. Seems to me that one huge retention (and cost-effectiveness) factor will be assessing how important many of the hard-to-fill billets really are.

[goingkinetic]

TnkrToad,

I don't think the bonus is ineffective per se; however, I do think it would be an effective tool if it were raised. Let's say my number is 50k a year, which doesn't seem unreasonable since the 25k per year has been around for 15 years, and inflation adjusted assuming 2% inflation it should be 34k.

It is still much cheaper to pay a fighter pilot 500k then try to replace him.

Assuming 1200-1500 Ftr Hours at Seperation x 10k per flight hour plus pilot training and the replacement costs are a significant cost driver. I'm not an actuary, but any bonus under 1-2 million to retain the majority of the folks would still likely be cost effective from an experience cost standpoint. Additionally, it takes 3-4 years to get an experienced fighter pilot which is one of the major issues the fighter porch is dealing with right now.

Quite frankly, AFPC's number crunchers are doing a piss poor job in my view. I'd love to see what an actuary at a major insurance company thinks the bonus should be.

Unfortunately, the air force is more concerned with creating GO's than retaining experienced line flyers. As a result the bonus becomes somewhat irrelevant as you alluded to with something like the top 20% and bottom 20% taking the bonus.

[Jughead]

AFPC's number crunchers are doing a piss poor job

In other news, rain is wet....

[ViperStud]

TT,

The beauty about statistics is 69% of them are pulled out of thin air. I love how you make up rough approximations and apply them to eligibles to make exact numbers of golden boys, slugs and fence sitters. Here's the reality - the golden boys and slugs are staying in anyway. A few fence sitters may be tempted by cash but I know a lot that are passing on the bonus. I've yet to meet a single person to say the money convinced them to stay so until I do then I propose that the bonus retained no one. The fence sitters I know that signed the bonus stayed for the AD pension, not the bonus money. Fact.

Prozac, AFPC can't control QOL things like bases, ops tempo, and work hours due to shitty leadership. Our leaders, mil and civ, control that. We all know the shit leaders on AD (Rat, Yogi, he whose name should not be spoken), but the civvies are to blame too. Who in Nm is so influential that HO got vipers and we screwed out SOF guys with Cannon, at huge expense to the taxpayers (and troop morale) with the accompanying drop in FTU output at HO. Fuck politicians that put their local interests ahead of combat capability and bang-for-buck, and that's all of them. All AFPC can do is throw money at the problem. Increases in QOL in the current system are a pipe dream.

Assignments will continue to go to BNRs and dudes that know their porch guys first, then to #1s then to rank and file. Maybe commitments will come into play too, but AFPC will never just hand good deals to free agents and screw over golden boys promoted in the self image of shitty 0-6s, the brass won't allow it.

[Breckey]

Who in Nm is so influential that HO got vipers and we screwed out SOF guys with Cannon, at huge expense to the taxpayers (and troop morale) with the accompanying drop in FTU output at HO. ###### politicians that put their local interests ahead of combat capability and bang-for-buck, and that's all of them

Mark Udall. He's campaigning on it as well.

[TnkrToad]

TT,

The beauty about statistics is 69% of them are pulled out of thin air. I love how you make up rough approximations and apply them to eligibles to make exact numbers of golden boys, slugs and fence sitters. Here's the reality - the golden boys and slugs are staying in anyway. A few fence sitters may be tempted by cash but I know a lot that are passing on the bonus. I've yet to meet a single person to say the money convinced them to stay so until I do then I propose that the bonus retained no one. The fence sitters I know that signed the bonus stayed for the AD pension, not the bonus money. Fact.

Prozac, AFPC can't control QOL things like bases, ops tempo, and work hours due to shitty leadership. Our leaders, mil and civ, control that. We all know the shit leaders on AD (Rat, Yogi, he whose name should not be spoken), but the civvies are to blame too. Who in Nm is so influential that HO got vipers and we screwed out SOF guys with Cannon, at huge expense to the taxpayers (and troop morale) with the accompanying drop in FTU output at HO. ###### politicians that put their local interests ahead of combat capability and bang-for-buck, and that's all of them. All AFPC can do is throw money at the problem. Increases in QOL in the current system are a pipe dream.

Assignments will continue to go to BNRs and dudes that know their porch guys first, then to #1s then to rank and file. Maybe commitments will come into play too, but AFPC will never just hand good deals to free agents and screw over golden boys promoted in the self image of shitty 0-6s, the brass won't allow it.

Of course I made up the percentages--I pulled them out of my fundamental orifice to make a point. We can quibble about numbers, but I think the general theme is viable. Bottom line, the bonus is only useful to the extent that it affects fence-sitters. You have to make some kind of assumption in order to assess whether/not the program is effective

- The fact is that, for this FY, the USAF has obligated over $28M in bonuses for fighter pilots alone in this FY

- Based upon the notional 35% baseline I put forth, that means that--at best--the bonus only truly netted about 35 fighter pilot "fence sitters" . . . which means that the ARP program really cost over $800k for each pilot that might possibly be swayed by the program

- If, as you submit, few (or none) were swayed by the bonus, then the per-unit cost of retained fighter pilots increases even further . . . and the economic argument for the bonus becomes even more shaky

I personally think the bonus does influence individuals' decision making processes. It seems ridiculous to assert that folks would stay in, in order to get a AD retirement (for its monetary benefits), but the monetary benefits associated with the bonus would be irrelevant.

Air Force leaders can do nothing about political leaders (other than try to vote the bums out--good luck with that).

The question is what Air Force leaders can actually control.

- They have control over what they offer in bonuses--but given the deafening silence from Gen Chang (or anyone else on this forum with insight), it doesn't appear that any serious thought/analysis is actually being applied to this problem

- They can control the distribution of pilots within various communities, through multiple means--initial qual training slots, promotion selections, developmental education selections, ARP bonuses and (all too often) force management efforts like VSP and TERA. Again, the admittedly anecdotal (but nonetheless stark) evidence shows that rated managers have poor utilized all the force management options available

- I would submit that gross imbalances between different MDSs and/or shortages/overages within particular year groups is a significant cause of discontent--and it is something Big Blue can at least try to address. Being in an undermanned pilot community, in an undermanned year group sucks. So, I imagine, does being in an overmanned pilot community/year group.

- Unequal distribution of "good deal" assignments is likewise a major, controllable factor. If Big Blue wants to improve retention, then a more equitable distribution of hard-to-fills between high-potential types and average joes (rather than the rich get richer theme) would likewise help substantially.

-- Having known a bunch of dudes who reached the ends of their UPT commitments in the late-90s, I can guarantee that the flesh peddlers can and will take free agency into account when handing out assignments. Free agent types won't get assignments to HAF staff or other career-enhancing assignments, but you'll be amazed at how many of them end of getting OSA and garden-spot MWS assignments

Should be interesting to see how this all plays out.

TT

[ViperStud]

Not ridiculous at all - the $$ involved in the bonus pales in comparison to the pension: 25K/yr for 5 or 9 years versus ~50K/yr for life. As is, the bonus is peanuts compared to the pension. In my particular case, the bonus didn't factor one bit in my decision. I ran numbers sure, but I ended up making a decision based on QOL rather than money. Money will be there for someone with their sh!t together. I'm still waiting for one single person, either on this forum or in real life, to say the bonus is what swayed them to stay in. All takers I know were either career guys anyway (either because they love the life or want the pension) or slugs.

AF leaders can't control completely the bonus offerings. They are capped at 25K/yr by law. This is why the only thing they could do was increase length rather than girth for fighter and RPA guys.

I get what you are saying about unit cost for fence sitters and according to my logic it's astronomical when you start dividing by zero but you're missing my point - it's not about retaining people as much as it's about being able to forecast. I don't think the bonus keeps any MORE people in, but it sure lets AFPC know how many raw numbers it has committed for the next 5 or 9 years. By design or not (probably not), that is what the bonus actually does...at least, until that dude comes out of the woodwork and admits the bonus alone is why he stayed. Don't hold your breath for that.

[sqwatch]

but it sure lets AFPC know how many raw numbers it has committed for the next 5 or 9 years.

Shack.

[TnkrToad]

I get what you are saying about unit cost for fence sitters and according to my logic it's astronomical when you start dividing by zero but you're missing my point - it's not about retaining people as much as it's about being able to forecast. I don't think the bonus keeps any MORE people in, but it sure lets AFPC know how many raw numbers it has committed for the next 5 or 9 years. By design or not (probably not), that is what the bonus actually does...at least, until that dude comes out of the woodwork and admits the bonus alone is why he stayed. Don't hold your breath for that.

Shack.

Copy all--then your clear recommendation is to reset the fighter pilot bonuses to the same options offered to the other pilot communities:

- The 20 YAS bonus offers almost no net change in predictability

- As you said, and Sqwatch acknowledged, the total monetary benefit offered by the 20 YAS option is irrelevant to people's decision processes

-- The 5 yr commitment takes folks to at least 16 yrs commissioned service, and extremely few separate between the 16-20 yr point, so the 20 YAS option offers essentially nothing in terms of added predictability

- Unless someone speaks up on this forum and says that the 20 YAS option was a significant factor in their decision to take the bonus, your assertion that the bonus is irrelevant can reasonably be assumed to be correct

I hope General Chang & company are listening--you might have just saved the Air Force a bunch of cash in unnecessary bonus payouts to fighter pilots that really don't care about the extra income.

[Herk Driver]

So do you really have a fundamental problem with the bonus or is it just you are pissed about 11Ms not having the same financial incentive to stay in that 11Fs have?

Posted from the NEW Baseops.net App!

[sqwatch]

Copy all--then your clear recommendation is to reset the fighter pilot bonuses to the same options offered to the other pilot communities:

Don't put words in my mouth (sts)

I hope General Chang & company are listening--you might have just saved the Air Force a bunch of cash in unnecessary bonus payouts to fighter pilots that really don't care about the extra income.

Again, tnkrtoad, emphasis on the TANKR, is attempting to speak for a community he has demonstrated he knows little about, and for individuals that have circumstances other than his own. While no one has said (or no one I know will admit) that the money made them stay, the money DID get them to sign a 9 year commitment. NO ONE will sign a 9 year commitment, even the slugs or shinny pennies for free. It's a trade between AFPC and the individual.

[TnkrToad]

So do you really have a fundamental problem with the bonus or is it just you are pissed about 11Ms not having the same financial incentive to stay in that 11Fs have?

Posted from the NEW Baseops.net App!

I'm just having a little fun with ViperStud's logic. His assertion that size of the bonus doesn't matter is bogus. That Sqwatch initially supported him is just funny. I get it that retirement benefits are more significant than the bonus, but how much Big Blue puts on the table does matter. My real point is that I can't come up with a way that the ARP actually makes sense:

- If larger bonuses are targeted toward undermanned communities, why weren't the 11S and 11H communities offered the same bonuses as 11Fs? In my experience, those two communities are worse-manned and getting worse-crushed than fighter bubbas. Helo and AFSOC guys--feel free to disagree

- You gotta be smoking crack if you think the 20 YAS option adds anything in the way of personnel stability. People that stay in until 16 yrs are almost inevitably going to stay until 20. It's all about offering a bigger monetary payout, in the belief that doing so will substantially increase the bonus take rate

- With regard to one of my earlier posts, my primary point was merely to question whether or not the increased bonus for 11Fs might is cost effective. I would love to hear someone explain--especially if so few are swayed by the bonus--how it could possibly be that the huge fiscal outlays justify a theoretically minor difference in take rates

- I'm well past the bonus, so the bonuses offered to 11Ms has no direct impact on me. What does bother me is total lack of proactivity that the ARP program WRT 11Ms indicates. If personnel stability is really a concern and an airline hiring boom is starting, why in the world would Big Blue not try to do something special to retain those from the community that will find it easiest to walk into the civilian sector?

The fact that nobody on this forum has offered a rational justification for how/why the ARP program makes sense indicates to me that our force managers either don't know what they're doing, or are operating from a logic that is totally opaque--at least to me. Given the internal and external challenges the Air Force is facing WRT pilot manning, it scares the crap out of my that our rated force managers seem clueless. My beef is with rated managers, not fighter bubbas.

Cheers,

TT

edited for minor grammar issue & stuff

Edited October 3, 2014 by TnkrToad

[ViperStud]

TT...having fun with my logic? Is that a joke or are you really that clueless? To answer your question, yes most of what you said two posts ago - I agree with. The 20 YAS option is worthless. Beyond the standard 5-yr option, it amounts to 35K (after taxes) up front plus 8-9K (after taxes) literally 6-9 years from now. Any "logic" arguing that those payouts are make-or-break is a moron. I agree that almost no one gets out at 16-20. Does that mean that the size of the bonus doesn't matter - not at all. Standby for words.

What I'd love to see is a sliding scale starting at ~69K/yr for the top 1% of the year group down to zero for the bottom 1%. I'm very cynical, but still 90% serious. Why not pay talent and not pay the slouches? That is what corporate America does, and is exactly the reason why slugs sign the bonus - there is little demand for them in a free market. Yes, i get that this is a pipe dream because the process used to identify the top people needs work. It will never happen. Still, ideally we would pay to retain the good ones and not the bad ones.

Ok - reality check. What they can realistically do is offer everyone 50K/yr for 5. They are too reactionary to really be able to target year groups and communities.

I also believe out leadership lacks the integrity to admit there is a problem, regardless of the final numbers. They will simply delete some staff gigs and decrease pilot:jet ratios and say there is nothing to see here. Then the guys on the line suffer from even more do-more-with-less BS. It's a self-licking ice cream cone that takes truly dynamic leadership and a paradigm shift to solve. We've yet to see such leadership.

Edited October 3, 2014 by ViperStud

[TnkrToad]

TT...having fun with my logic? Is that a joke or are you really that clueless? To answer your question, yes most of what you said two posts ago - I agree with. The 20 YAS option is worthless. Beyond the standard 5-yr option, it amounts to 35K (after taxes) up front plus 8-9K (after taxes) literally 6-9 years from now. Any "logic" arguing that those payouts are make-or-break is a moron. I agree that almost no one gets out at 16-20. Does that mean that the size of the bonus doesn't matter - not at all. Standby for words.

What I'd love to see is a sliding scale starting at ~69K/yr for the top 1% of the year group down to zero for the bottom 1%. I'm very cynical, but still 90% serious. Why not pay talent and not pay the slouches? That is what corporate America does, and is exactly the reason why slugs sign the bonus - there is little demand for them in a free market. Yes, i get that this is a pipe dream because the process used to identify the top people needs work. It will never happen. Still, ideally we would pay to retain the good ones and not the bad ones.

Ok - reality check. What they can realistically do is offer everyone 50K/yr for 5. They are too reactionary to really be able to target year groups and communities.

I also believe out leadership lacks the integrity to admit there is a problem, regardless of the final numbers. They will simply delete some staff gigs and decrease pilot:jet ratios and say there is nothing to see here. Then the guys on the line suffer from even more do-more-with-less BS. It's a self-licking ice cream cone that takes truly dynamic leadership and a paradigm shift to solve. We've yet to see such leadership.

It's not a joke that some number of people (clearly not you) have found the bonus--and among fighter types the added option of $225k (before taxes)--makes them more likely to stay in and commit to a 20 year career. Your advocacy for $50k/yr for 5 years ($250k before taxes) across the board supports the argument for increasing bonuses order to improve bonus take rates--for all pilot communities, not just fighter guys.

- I violently agree with you that our senior leaders need to be realistic with the extent of the problem and tell us what they intend to do about it. Given General Chang and rtgators' silence on this forum, It's not clear to me that they their staff officers are giving them useful data, so they can understand the depth of pilot manning challenges we're facing.

[ViperStud]

Still think you're going out on a limb with your first assumption - where are these people that were swayed by the bonus, the ones you claim are more likely to stay until 20 with the 9-year bonus option? Pure speculation on your part - and you do sound a little bitter that the option is on the table for some but not all (your) peeps.

Regardless, I have a decent sample size among my current (outside AD) and former (on AD) peers. We've talked about this a lot. Not one person was moved by the bonus. Most of us went so far as to say it wasn't even considered as a factor. Show me that dude that changed his mind because of the bonus and I will say you got me.

25k/year is a life-changing bonus for a walmart bagger. Not so for pilots with their shit together who can easily demand low 6 figures outside AD either in the airlines or a myriad of other places.

ETA: what I really meant to say last post was 50k/year til retirement, not for 5 years. Almost half a mil and now we're talking. Shit if that were on the table I'd probably be in Korea right now. Everyone has their price. Everyone I know has a price above 25k/yr.

Edited October 3, 2014 by ViperStud

[TnkrToad]

Ugh.

- Dude, all I know is I followed the logic of what you said (that nobody is swayed by the bonus) and made the conclusion that the 20 YAS is a mistake that should be corrected. Why throw more money at folks who are going to stay anyway?

-- Sqwatch--who initially agreed with you--immediately objected to my actually agreeing with him. Given his immediate objection to the suggestion that Chang & company should get rid of the 20 YAS option (as you indicated, it's useless), the bonus seems to be a big deal to him, if nobody else.

-- You subsequently argued that we should offer $250k . . . that we should double the bonuses for everybody (more than is currently being offered to 11Fs), which seems to contradict your assertion that short-term monetary incentives are irrelevant to every pilot's decision on whether to stay or go

- You can presume whatever you want about my motivations. You've got me--I care about the 11M community, and oddly enough about tanker dudes. I presume you're more familiar with the F-16 community, and that topics related to fighters are especially interesting to you

-- As a tanker dude, I've got a fair idea of what kind of range your MDS has. I would hope you'd be interested, too, in retaining some talent in the tanker community (particularly in the CAOC, which is where plenty of those bonus takers are), as you drill holes in the sky over Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/Upickastan/wherever we end up next.

-- You still refuse to engage with what, in my opinion, is the indefensibility of offering a higher bonus to 11Fs, while refusing to do so for 11Ss and 11Hs (particularly HH-60 guys). How does asking a logical question about this issue equate to my looking out solely for the 11M community?

At this point, I'm not bitter, just tired. It seems like we're just talking past each other, anyway. Water's wet, sky's blue, and rated management is totally screwed up. Good night.

NKAWTG,

TT

[Ram]

You're trying really hard, dude. Why not get off the interweb and try doing something that's actually worthwhile?

[ViperStud]

Dude you are not quick on the uptake. I never said short term incentives don't work, just that 25k/ year isn't enough. No contradiction at all by saying if they double it then it might actually sway people. If they gave me 4 mil one-time I would have stayed in. How's that for a short-term incentive.

Dude, nobody is going to say the bonus is bad. We like money. I sure do. You make a big leap from hearing that someone likes the bonus to assuming it swayed them. sqwatch never said it swayed him, you put those words in his mouth. Dude I'm done - this conversation is a waste of time because you twist everything anyone says to support your "if A then B" framework. Newsflash - not a single person has claimed the bonus swayed them yet. Use deductive logic and misquote us all you want, you're still spinning your wheels.

NKAWTG - that's cute. Take shots at our range and loiter time all you want, we don't need sophomoric rhyming pats on the back to feel good about ourselves.

[sqwatch]

NKAWTG,

[Chuck17]

This thread took entirely too long to devolve into dickmeasuring. You guys need to up your game.

Chuck

[Nineline]

There's a Navy joke in that pic somewhere. I just can't seem to pull it out...

-9-

Edited October 4, 2014 by Nineline

[genie90]

Have any AD/ARC bubbas received a bonus payment yet? All the ANG pilots/navs I've asked are stalled at: "Referred to Guard-NGB ACP Program Mgt (A1PF) ANG."

[herkbum]

Have any AD/ARC bubbas received a bonus payment yet? All the ANG pilots/navs I've asked are stalled at: "Referred to Guard-NGB ACP Program Mgt (A1PF) ANG."

Have gotten mine the last 2 yrs. Most recent was last month.