JeremiahWeed

Agreed - but I guess they meet the mins. I'm no crash expert, but that one seems like maybe there's a possibility it wasn't immediately fatal. First guy on the scene runs up after about a minute with nothing to fight the fire which took that long to start building. Just thinking out loud, but I wonder if the RJ pilot who ran into his a/c to get the other pilot to come look instead came out with the Halon bottle and hauled ass the roughly 100 yards to the crash. Hard to watch at least 7 able bodied people stand by while someone potentially burns to death.

Sort of..... again. When you have a trip that starts or ends with a deadhead, the company buys you a ticket between your domicile and the city where the trips starts or ends. If you choose, you can deviate from that travel plan. The ticket they buy gets cancelled and you can buy your own using money from the cancelled ticket. They don't move the starting airport. You can start from wherever you want. For front-end DHs, there is a deadline and by deviating, you're agreeing to take on all responsibility to get your ass in place on time. If you want to buy an airline ticket, JS on company metal, hire a limo or any combination, it's up to you. If you have money left over, you can use it to deviate on another trip by adding to the bank from that trip. There are guys who hold double dead-heads (front and back) who almost never go to their domicile unless they have recurrent there. All the frequent flyer miles and the benefits that come with them are yours. I never drive to/from the airport. 100% of the time I hire a car service on Uncle Fred's dime. If you commute, there is really no other way to do it.

I’m in Huggy’s camp too. I flew them at United but I didn’t know any better. Going back to them after years of flying MD-11s and 777s, I gotta say I’m not a fan. Low tech, low systems automation, pos wx radar, uncomfortable seats and now an after market interface to put speeds on the PFD speed tape so it’s semi-compatible with the 767 LDS. It’s a “Frankenjet” compared to the brand new 767s and 777s Fedex gets delivered almost monthly. The only reason I fly it is I get paid the wide-body rate since our base operates both. All that said, I still rank the 737 at the bottom of the heap. What a POS.

FedEx. No reason to inflate or convince anyone to come here. I'll try to be as objective as I can. Just think it's worth putting it on your radar if it wasn't. Cons: 90 minute call-out on reserve in Memphis. All other bases it's 3-hours. There is such thing as R-24 (with 24-hour notice for assignments) but it's a fraction of the reserve lines and they usually assign base hotel standby to R-24s soon after it starts and bring you into base. None of the "industry common" reserve attributes like long-call, the ability to bypass assignments, aggressive pick-up, etc. Overall, I'd say the reserve system at FedEx is at best middle of the road in the industry. On the positive side, reserve usage tends to be low and if you choose to live in domicile and can hold it, you stay home often with pay. Domestic night flying commits you to day sleeping while you're at work. If you can't do that consistently, FedEx life will be much harder for you. If you're okay flying longer trips internationally, your life can be much simpler and the flying is infinitely easier. Pros: Commuter friendly - I realize the common advice is not to commute. Impossible to argue with that if you have the life flexibility to move to domicile. If you're established somewhere and don't want to move to a pax carrier domicile, there is no airline in the US where it's easier to be a commuter. As someone who has done both, I guarantee the ease of commute at FedEx is difficult to describe to someone who has never experienced it. The entire operation and system form is set up to fly all the aircraft from the outstations into domicile for the sort and launch 2-3 hours later on the first flight of of a trip. Getting to base for a trip from a city served by direct FedEx flights is a piece of cake and there are ample contractual protections for the potential missed commute. Same with the end of a trip. So there's no mad scramble to block-in and run to a commuter flight to get home. Lines are constructed to minimize commutes per month. In 16-years at FedEx, I have never commuted more than twice in a month. The other unique aspect of the FedEx operation is the regular use of commercial flights to deadhead pilots into position. This give a huge percentage of the pilot group the option to commute to and from work with positive space tickets purchased with company money. I have made executive platinum at AA for the last 12 years straight. While I don't have company passes to travel standby for free, I have been able to use my frequent flyer miles to obtain tickets for my family any time it suits us. In terms of career earnings, current new hires at FedEx are going to have access to wide-body captain seats much earlier than their peers at pax carriers. 83% of our Captain seats are wide body seats with the potential to hit our highest pay rates. Run those same numbers on the Captain seats at your typical legacy carrier. We have pilots hired less than 8-years ago who are now wide-body Captains and will be on our highest pay scales for most of their careers. There are even some outliers in WB seats at the 6-year point at our HKG and OAK bases. Based on projected retirements, that trend is going to continue for the next decade at a minimum. These are the seats and pay rates that many pax carrier pilots only get access to in the few final years of their careers if at all. Late in career military retirees can opt to chase $$ and get to seats they would never touch somewhere else. Or they can chase QOL and be in a WB FO seat far sooner, flying long-haul international if that suits them. No matter which seat or aircraft you end up in, the actual flight hours you spend in the seat are usually a fraction of what you get paid for. Domestic lines paying 80-90 credit hours have about 30 actual flight hours in them. Long-haul 777 schedules are probably 50 actual flight hours for 85-100 credit hours of pay. In my opinion, the threat of single-pilot cargo operations are unrealistic. That's a much longer conversation, but technological capability on a test-bed vs realistic industry application that actually equates to appropriate savings are not the same thing. So, if that is steering a current pilot with the quals away from FedEx or UPS, I think you're over-reacting to that potential downside. Just throwing out the cargo consideration for those who may have written it off.

https://www.fortcrookipms.com/ckfinder/userfiles/files/2017/Cherry Girl.pdf

The only thing we had was a programmable audio alert. Set a specific MSL altitude and it would go off when you passed that altitude. Other than that it was some standard ROT based on dive angle x 100 for an AGL WAG (i.e. 2000' no lower than 20 degree NL without a no-shit dive recovery effort).

Put aside the major cultural differences. I could be okay with not expecting some Saudi fuck to be on board with US standards when it comes to women's rights. Get your training so you don't meet you maker earlier than necessary and maybe not be the typical ME fuck-tard that can't employ at even a basic level. But, is it that much to ask for a civilized military officer to show up for work daily not smelling like a camel's asshole? Figure your hygiene issues out and don't expect us to accept your BS standards that were formulated out of necessity when a bath was only possible once a month. We don't impose our standards on the host nation when we have exchange pilots working there. WTF?

SocialD and Prozac, I'm going to have to disagree. Yes, the failure of chopping syllabi, lack of parts, poor senior leadership, et al. is clearly at the root. Coming at this from a macro level and isolating the failure well above the squadron or wing is just not an accurate assessment, IMO. That fails to put the micro level responsibility exactly where it should be - at the feet of the flight, squadron and wing leadership. The fighter squadron has always had to insulate itself from the general dumbfuckery of the USAF leadership and when required unfuck the results caused by the same. There was always a final sanity filter at the operator level. Lt Schmitz was clearly challenged by the basics on this particular night. No senior level general officer directed this particular Lt complete this particular mission in the manner attempted. There was a grass roots failure to consider the current limits of his capability and over-task him. How and why he arrived at that diminished level of capability isn't relevant to that local level decision. No one can say for sure what the outcome would have been with different choices. We can "what-if" this all the way back to his B-course and the Mx decision process regarding the seat. But, given his actual state of qualification when he stepped, he should have been walking out to a D-model with an IP. If that happened, it's almost guaranteed we'd be plus one F-16 and pilot. Failing that, having a proactive SOF that actually got the tech support necessary to make his recommendation would have at least bought this kid an extra 2000 feet to save his own life in the seat with a manual chute deployment.

YGBSM. Years of TCTO delays and lack of parts for an egress system? Producing a F-16 B-course graduate who has NEVER seen a tanker? How in the actual fuck does this happen? Those are huge failures on an almost systemic scale. But, I'll focus most of my wrath on the bro-level. What kind of decision process in the mind of a squadron IP makes it even a reasonable plan to take an MQT student to his first AAR event EVER, at night in a single seat fighter while piling on a never before seen mission event as well? Oh, and add in the fact that he hadn't flown in more than 5 days and had only recently returned to regular flying in the last month. We're talking basic common sense here. Do we really need USAF directives (that were ignored!!!) that specifically prohibit attempting new events in MQT at night without a demo pro in the day first to figure out this is a really, really bad plan? Do we really need an RM worksheet (that wasn't calculated properly anyway) to figure out this is a really, really bad plan? Then there's the SOF. Another bro-level failure. We're rolling the dice and just guessing now on a situation that's not addressed in the checklist? The MP actually caught this and tried to get guidance on the fact that the checklist didn't completely address the situation and had steps he couldn't accomplish. No Conference Hotel? WTF? It's truly incredible how badly the supposedly experienced leadership involved in this fighter squadron completely failed this pilot. What an absolute clown show!

Why is an Iron Eagle reference related to the KK universe?

Why are we retiring 30-year-old KC 10 tankers and still flying -135s twice their age? Is it the difference between a/c designed with a slide-rule and extra engineering slop as a result vs those designed using a computer or something else?

I’d feel badly for him too, since eating crap in SA is much worse than dying in a fireball of your own creation or doing same while taking some buds with you. 🙄 At least 3 tries at a set of wings is way more than most guys get. Somehow I think the free world will be okay without another target occupying the driver seat of an otherwise useful fighter.

I don't claim to have my finger on the current pulse of a typical AD squadron. If CT sorties are non-existent, that's a problem, no doubt. However, MQT or FLUG syllabi shouldn't require extensive BFM missions. It's a spot check to ensure the trainee is proceeding at an acceptable pace. Is the MQT student reasonably proficient as a new wingman fighting a full-up adversary? Can the FLUG student fulfill his new role leading and debriefing that mission, setting up the engagements, ensuring safety and adherence to the TRs. If either of those students needs more than a couple of BFM sorties to move on to the next phase, there's a problem.

This right here.^^^^^^ The monthly, building block training cycle is key. You don't do one BFM sortie per month. You spend ALL of your monthly sorties focusing on BFM and then move on to a more advanced phase. Development of muscle memory and "snap-shot" recognition of fleeting opportunity only happens through repetition. Instead of having an engagement always develop from a familiar perch or high-aspect "go" point, now we all can recognize those snap-shots seen over and over through the meat of the engagements in any visual situation we might encounter. The "startle" is gone and our ability to quickly analyze a situation is enhanced. Sure - BVR and longer range WVR employment is the most likely outcome to current combat engagements. But, discounting the value of enhancing the skill of visual maneuvering to a WEZ is to make the same mistake our predecessors made more than 5 decades ago when they blew off the gun and assumed missiles removed all requirement for visual engagements. Success in the visual engagement is still one of the most difficult skills to master. Hoping our weapons and technology remove our need to use those skills is to repeat the mistakes of the past. A well designed, repetitive training program should allow development of basic skills all the way to the most complex.

Uh oh, now I’ve done it. 🙄 So, are all the F-22s and F-35s just missing a seat in your world?

It was designed for two in the late 1980's when the weapons and information interface may have supported two crew members (primarily for the ground attack mission). The inconvenient truth is that the only production line open at McBoeing is the two-seat version. If the USAF had the option to buy a single seat version, my guess is they probably would. So I wouldn't read too much into the extra seat. The fact is that the current data flow available through on and off-board sensors and the interface between aircraft and pilot is stagnated and even hindered by filtering that information through another human linked to the pilot by a simple voice intercom. Hate to burst the bubble for some of you GIB types, but this isn't 20th century fighter employment where an extra set of eyeballs saves the day when an undetected bandit swings your wingline or sensor interface or weapons employment is so complex that another crew member is required to do the job. No offense, just reality.

31 year old data from 1989 hasn’t changed much. 196 total in UPT 86 T-37, 110 T-38

Dafuq is all that ink? We tracking every bomb successfully dropped off the aircraft now? 🤔

FedEx hiring info: The last two classes (8 pilots in March, 10 in April) were all hired into our Hong Kong 767 domicile and will be arriving in HK in mid to late summer. Quick update we received today on future hiring via internal comm: "Due to the increase in extra sections and charters, we were unable to post a realignment bid this spring as originally planned. However, we will begin hiring 757 First Officers right away to shore up staffing needs on the fleet. In addition, we will hire 767 First Officers to staff FY21 aircraft deliveries. The 767 fleet currently stands at 85 with 18 coming into the fleet in FY21 (June 2020-June 2021). In addition, some of the schedule opportunities for the 767 are in crew-intensive international long-haul, which is also driving this hiring need." My takeaway from this is a steady hiring cycle continuing through this year and into next year with probably a minimum of 400 pilots simply for attrition. Many of the companies that made a practice of moving their products as belly freight on passenger aircraft have obviously had to change their mode of transit. FedEx has taken the opportunity to negotiate long term contracts (7 years in some cases) with them and locked in a significant increase in future expected business. So, all things continue to indicate growth and hiring. One other thing I forgot - We had a pool of about 200 that were interviewed late summer into the fall of 2019. My guess is those poolies will take us into late 2020 before more "off the street" pilots are being put into classes. But, I think late summer to fall interviews this year with start dates in 2021 are a realistic expectation for anyone not interviewed yet. Caveat all of the above with an end to Covid BS by this fall if not sooner. We won't dodge that bullet forever if this keeps up.

Yep - I'm a dumass. No one has every held me up as the most observant and I'm staying true to that. 🙄

T-37 with: Stronger wings, 3x hard points per side Tip tanks GAU-2 mini-gun in the nose T-38 (J85) non afterburning engines Beefed up gear Better, FAC style radio suite Cooler paint job

Well FedEx is making a lot of lemonade with those lemons. Hacker’s info is accurate. They’ve also said there isn’t enough time this year or aircraft in our fleet to move all the freight that’s available as a result of the lost belly freight from the pax airlines cutting Asia flights. They are making a metric shit ton of money. Now if we can just convince them to give us lowly pilots a little taste in exchange for all the ass pain we’re enduring out on the line. Once again through nothing other than external circumstances, the cargo airlines might start looking pretty dayum good to those who may have turned their nose up at them a month ago. Whether you reconsider cargo or stick with chasing a pax gig, It is a worthwhile wake up call to some of you guys thinking about making the leap off active duty. It’s been ice cream cones and blow jobs for quite a few years and it’s easy to forget ( or lack awareness to begin with) what a shit show the airline industry can be when things suddenly get bad. Those of you considering pulling chocks without a safety net might want to reconsider that guard or reserve job. It saved my ass when I got furloughed and just prior to that, things were looking just as rosy then as they have been lately. Just sayin’ - give it some serious thought.

A shit-ton of money, successful business ventures combined with an obvious business acumen make you..... a very good businessman and entrepreneur. I give zero f#cks about his opinion on the future of manned air warfare.

So are you talking “1” in the context of the over 40 year old gentleman’s binary rating scale (1 or 0)? or the true 1-10 scale used by youngsters who actually still think it matters if a chick is a 4 or a 7? Just curious 😁

Interesting perspective. Don't know the leader who did the firing. I'll assume what has been posted previously is accurate regarding the expectations of that leader re: the altitude and airspeed of this maneuver. Full up war or not - is it not reasonable for a leader to expect compliance with limits that he set and were agreed upon by his subordinates? Couldn't one make the argument that failing a simple test of disciple in peacetime puts into questions this squadron CC's ability to pass far more serious tests of discipline in a full up war? 600 feet and 350 kts doesn't look as good as 200' and 500 knots. But considering the lack of experience and currency that created an environment where an F-18 speared a C-130 on a night AAR, maybe it's possible little of that currency problem has been solved. As simple as that flyby may be for most current, hard charging guys - maybe higher and slower was all the General felt those guys were capable of at that time. If the jet doing the flyby hit the water and the CC wasn't in the jet, would you be saying the same thing about the lack of "real leadership" over the decision to fire him? Just because someone didn't mort doesn't make the lack of discipline acceptable. What if the CC of the squadron with the tanker mid-air had briefed the General that they wouldn't do night AAR and then did it anyway? Where's the line if not exactly where it's been agreed on.