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Until they start paying guys who stay in comparable to year 2-3 salary at the airlines not much is going to stick...people can claim “it isn’t about the money,” but when the 9-10 year post UPT dudes with families start hearing their bros talk about how awesome their airline gig is in terms of $ v QOL the decision matrix becomes real simple.

Yup, only 1-2 fighters for the T-1 bros...

It has been mighty quiet on here after Helsinki and the FISA release.

Concur, and this point cannot be overemphasized. The traditional pax-carrier thinking is turned on its head with FedEx. You DO NOT need to live in domicile with FedEx. Many front side / back side DHs to begin and end your work week. And if not, a quick JS into Memphis only 2-3 hrs before the trip showtime is the other possibility. For me and mine, the hellish option would be to move to Memphis and raise my kids here. Absolutely not. Not attempting to piss in anyone else’s Cheerios with where they’ve chosen to live. Without going into graphic detail, it’s simply not an option for my family. I’m glad to hear that guys senior to me love the out’n’backs...take every single one of them. Most of my months I only see Memphis for a quick day hub turn or (most likely) not at all. I declined a Delta interview once I was hired at FedEx. I already knew that my hatred toward the flying public would outweigh any wining / dining that Atlanta could entice me with during the interview process. I know that the Big D is fantastic for many guys...and again, more power to them. My family’s correct pick has nothing to do with any other family’s correct path. Another FDX plug...20+ years ago, the cargo pilot was looked upon as a second class citizen who couldn’t get hired as a “real” airline pilot. Anyone who has carnal knowledge of today’s schedules work at FDX has a hearty laugh at this. As a wide body FO since day 1, my half a month of “work” includes choosing which catering will be delivered and making sure my PJs are clean (enough) for my next nap, which will consist of precisely 1/3 of the enroute cruise time. The only time I’m required to show my face on the “other” side of the airport is when I’m in business casual civvies, getting paid block hours to DH in first class. It’s just stupid. I’ll say again, I’m very happy that the pax world (or moving to Memphis) is the perfect pick for many of us. But the cargo world does offer an entirely other job IMO. Airplanes are involved in both, but that’s where the similarities end. FedEx specifically has so many flavors of schedule (NB, WB, pure domestic, mixed domestic/intl, pure intl, nights, days) that are available from day 1, each FDXer has a different trash/treasure to seek...FROM DAY 1. We don’t have to wait for 5-10-15 yrs before sampling the WB pay, and certainly not before sampling the paid longer intl layover. We are not Part 117, which I’m discovering is a beautiful thing. I personally wouldn’t be happy as a pax guy. I speak only for myself. Hiring data point for consideration: I’m at 85% at the company after 1.5 yrs on property.

Flying at night in Asia is like day flying in the states. But no seriously your body clock is way screwed up for a couple days. The amount of night flying you do is, you guessed it, based on seniority.

What’s your background? It can be pretty decent in the hands of someone with a bit of experience. From my personal collection and the only time I’ve been fortunate enough to fight an Eagle WVR.

This is no joke. Mobility is a key part of that. Recent large scale exercise took international senior leaders though the concept of employing the one thing that the US can do that no-one else can match: global mobility married to global strike. Put lots mobility assets loaded with max grunt in a part of the A2AD where bad guys aren't expecting it, and you've got a whole new ball game. The world knows we can do this. No one can match it. If you think you can be a passive part of the mobility team and still meet those expectations, think again. The USAF mobility world needs to embrace empowered leadership, and the line guys need to step up their proactivity. The first few sentences of the video below describes EXACTLY what I hear when someone spouts off passive crap like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmdLcyES_Q

Banned... again. I can ban him faster than he can start them. It’s a war of attrition. Takes 15 mins to open an account here and 3 seconds for me to ban him. I just wished he would be more original and offer some new humor for you folks on here.

"Wait until after the election and I'll, ha ha, have more room to maneuver." "The 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back." "Using chemical weapons would be a redline for me." Reset. Administration in office with awareness of Russian shenanigans? Deliberate set up of homemade server complete with multiple examples of classified on it. 50,000 texts degenerating only one candidate by the same investigator responsible for looking at both major candidates. Or Confirmed Supreme Court Justice. About to be two. Most district and circuit court justices confirmed to date. Economy doing well. Out of unratified treaties with Iran and climate change scammers. One clown show of a press conference. Everything is reported as "this will be his end." And yet Hillary is the one in a housecoat extolling the virtues of illegal immigrants. Ask yourself "Why?"

AA has no minimum limit. The problem now is this thing called "red/redder" that basically makes trips impossible to drop/trade. Huge QOL issue.

So, if you take the devil's money, you must obviously not be skilled enough to make it on the outside. Noted. A lot of valid discussion in here, and then someone makes a blanket statement like this. Seems suspect.

The only saving grace we have is that as crappy as ours is everybody else around the world is even worse. Same with the military. We aren’t that good at War, everybody else is just F’ing terrible at it.

Honestly I’m sick of all of the bullshit so I don’t even watch the news anymore, even though you can’t really call it news (no matter what channel you’re watching). I don’t trust the government, and I can’t wait until I don’t work for them anymore. I’m sick of the ineptitude at all levels and I hate having to fight every support agency just to do my job on a daily basis. It’s no wonder everything is so dysfunctional in the military and elsewhere in the government.

The AF has figured out that is doesn't have to be good, just good enough. The quality of people doesn't matter as long as there is someone to fill a billet. They don't care about retention, because it doesn't matter to them as it can't be measured at a personnel management level. As long as there are guys still in their 10 year ADSC window, the flying billets are filled, regardless of skill level. Bonuses for anyone and anything beyond that is for guys to fill staff billets. They aren't paying for pilot skills, they're paying to keep the booger eaters in to keep the bureaucracy running.

Many people discuss single pilot ops as a precursor to autonomous ops. What they fail to acknowledge is that single pilot ops (in 121 cargo or pax birds) is really autonomous ops. This is because, if we ever get to the point where we are launching a single pilot Boeing or Airbus transport category aircraft on revenue service flights, there's going to be some way to cope with the possibility that the only pilot becomes incapacitated. Therefore, single pilot ops isn't going to happen until we're really at the point of autonomous operations. That's not going to happen until we no longer use a spoken VHF radio link with ATC for starters. This is all about the money and less about whether we have the technological capability to field an autonomous freighter. Of course, the technology exists today. But the reality of using it in our current environment and infrastructure along with the cost of aircraft mods and the fact that they would still have to pay operators on the ground is the biggest factor. The modifications on any existing freighter to go to single pilot with an autonomous contingency option are obviously extensive and expensive. FedEx just committed to an additional 12 777s to add to the 35+ they already operate and has firm orders on almost 70 more 767s on top of the 55 brand new ones they've bought in the past few years. A single 777 flight from Asia to the US generates millions of dollars in revenue every time we takeoff. The pilots flying that freight represent a fraction of one percent of the overall cost in generating those millions. I doubt the modifications required to support autonomous ops with these newly acquired aircraft as well as necessary changes to the existing public and private infrastructure at the worldwide airports we operate in and out of would produce a cost savings over the life of the jets. IMO, anyone currently old enough to fly for a living and post here with concerns about a 30+ year airline career is very safe. As far as going down to 3 or 2 pilots for long haul: What's the justification? The aircraft haven't changed. There really isn't a way to increase the automation from where it already is and justify reducing crew requirements as a result. The human body hasn't changed. Our ability to combat fatigue and the cumulative effects of the sleep debt we accrue on a 1 to 2-week trip is still the same. The work load might be low during oceanic cruise periods, but at any point a system failure might change that rapidly. The busy terminal area is still busy at the other end of the 13+ hour flight - less pilots in either situation means more work enroute, shorter breaks and more potential for fatigue. I'm about to go to bed and hopefully sleep for about 6 hours before my alert call. When I wake up, I'm going to make my third Pacific crossing between Japan and the US in less than a week. No one's going to be able to convince me fewer pilots would have been warranted on any of those flights. Good night. 😴

MiG-29K and SU-33, both super shitty versions of the land versions. So wieght limited by the ramp launch, they’re nearly useless.

Fixed that for you. Really sad read and hopefully isn't indicative of the culture in the AF these days WRT flying and maintaining our aging fleet. Not getting into details here so see your safety shop to get the skinny. Interested to see what the AIB will determine as well.

I'll always tell my friends that if they live in a city that a particular airline has a major base then go there. If you're going to commute, go to FedEx, for many of the reasons in Robots post. DH's on each end are awesome and amazing for QOL of a commuter. Hopefully you guys never cave to PBS because many of those trips could dry up as PBS is an efficiency machine! Other than that, the worry about dealing with pax is severely overblown by cargo guys. My interaction with pax is limited to seeing them as I walk back to the bunk for my break. When I was on a NB, it was limited to saying goodbye for 5 minutes as I checked out for hotties...unless it was the last leg of the day/trip, then I'm gone at break set! If we ever have issues with one, either the FAs take care of it or we call the cops/a company specialist. Shut the door and surf the interwebs while it's going down. No doubt, there is no shortage of innovation, it's the regulation that moves at a snails pace. Fuck, we've been trying to get a tactical arrival into our base (fairly close to a class b) and you'd think we're trying to restructure the entire arrival/departure corridor of ATL or DFW. 5 years laters, we've made little progress due to bureaucracy. Hell we were told, just trying to lower a MOA below 6k would take 6-9 years of environmental studies/bureaucracy. Ever hear of NextGen? What Hacker said! Companies won't spend shit on technology unless it's guaranteed to save them money. Heck I've been told that our former CEO wouldn't invest in something unless it could pay itself back in 12 months or less. They settled on shitty ass Surfaces (that were terrible) until they were forced to go to iPads due to Jeppesen saying they wouldn't support the surface anymore (at least that's the rumor). If anything, where I see this start to take hold is in long haul ops. 4-pilot crews dropping to 3, and 3 pilot crews dropping to 2. I mean today the only radio call I made from 20 West to 50 west was an SELCAL check...the rest was just bsing with the other guy. Would I want to do it single pilot....no f'n way! Like many things, it's super easy, until it isn't... Honestly this is one of the things that I could see unifying every pilot and every union (ALPA/Teamsters/APA/SWAPA/etc...). Could you imagine every airline and every cargo carrier going on strike at once? I honestly think that would happen, if companies tried to go single pilot. I'm in my early-mid 30s and I'm really not worried about single-pilot/no-pilot ops.

My distrust of this organization leads me to loathe accepting even a 2 year ADSC for a PCS, why in the world would I lock myself in for another 9 years with no absolutes? I can’t find anything on MyPers, but the news announcement has a lot of non-committal language in it like “try” and “may.” No thanks.

You're going to get crickets because it shows the Republican released memo was a fabrication. The central point of the memo was that the FBI didn't tell the FISA court about Steele's political motives, when in fact the footnote disclosing Steele’s possible bias takes up more than a full page in the applications, so there is literally no way the FISA Court could have missed it. When Rubio backs the FISA warrant, then it's abundantly clear Nunez is full of shit and was just trying to disrupt the investigation.

Longer video of the mishap: Do any of folks here have significant C-47/DC-3 time? If so, is taking off from the 3-point attitude (e.g. not raising the tail on the roll) a normal thing?

This is a thing? Happening in the USAF? UFB

Excellent post. One add. No more equating morale to donating $5 to the booster club to wear civilian clothes on Friday. We're the military, and we need to build morale by getting really good at killing bad people and breaking their stuff.

I left the MAF “mentoring” and assignments page. The only website where their is more fellatio is probably p0rnhub...

Maddog. Its hot, shitty, and goes to a lot of terrible places. 3-5 legs per day. But I’m at 50% seniority after a little over a year, only sat reserve for 2 months, and haven’t worked a weekend since the first month. Seniority is key.

Everyone rants about wanting a fly only track then complains when AMC gives them a fly only track.

Weird. I thought that normally tracked you to Eagles...

Raphael: Rafale: Subtle distinction, but different.

Contrary to popular belief, stupid questions do exist.

I’m depressed as I read this on hold w AFPC, then goin to un fuck my travel voucher with finance, then create another username password to dispute a damaged goods claim with the movers on most recent PCS. FML.

Do you want a super villain? Cause badmouthing a philanthropic kabzillionaire who loves to make rocket ships, flame throwers, and submarines is how you get a super villain.

We know, and we know they know, and they know we know they know. Meh, 4's bingo.

FWIW one of the c-17 crossflow guys was DG at IFF.

All nine made it home today...

Next Gen Helicopter: https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/g2988/bell-concept-helicopter/

Looks like it still has better performance than a 58D

You don't have any chance and I hope for your own sake you didn't even apply and embarrass yourself.