Hacker
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Posts posted by Hacker
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56 minutes ago, Clark Griswold said:
Interesting article on AF culture and resistance to changing it, focusing on the rated force.
SYNCHRONIZING CHANGE AND AIR FORCE CULTURE: MODERNIZATION AND THE DIRTY SECRET OF AIRCREW SHORTAGE
Worth the 10 mins to read IMO.
It is interesting that Maj Byrnes' analysis doesn't incorporate or consider the results of the late-90s fighter crossflow program.
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Now, all of those women who weren't joining the Air Force because of that blasted 3rd verse of the song will decide to become Airpersons.
Mission-critical issue solved.
Leadership at its finest.
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Elon is comparing some future theoretical capability that might exist with a capability that is operational and actually sitting on the ramp today. As someone far smarter than I once said, "the F-35 is a great 2000s fighter".
Such a comparison is difficult to take seriously.
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15 hours ago, AirGuardianC141747 said:
Cargo side declared minimal growth if any since 1 Jan/1st Qtr start even before things went viral. (more realistic meaning now)
Meanwhile, there is a multi-day backlog of freight going both directions at Purple ramps across Asia, and there aren't enough airframes or crews in the system to move anything close to the demand.
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19 hours ago, AirGuardianC141747 said:
somewhere delightful, sand centric or virus prone 😝
How's your side of the cargo fence handling China travel?
UPS recently negotiated with their union for volunteer on China trips, no-penalty removal for people with scheduled China trips, and 150% pay for those who do volunteer. Purple, right now, has business as usual.
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OP would be way better off sticking it out at his regional, upgrading to Captain and packing his resume with 121 MTPIC time, adding check airman to his resume, perhaps working on a union committee or some other volunteer work.
All of that will be more important on the resume and the "career airline" application than the A320 type or the bump in pay at Frontier or any of the ULCCs.
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On 2/3/2020 at 2:49 PM, AirGuardianC141747 said:
Regarding the 737 Max, not a bad idea for Fred Smith to capitalize on a conversion freighter but they have bigger fish (Amazon) to fry or deal with. Since Amazon’s ground movement inception (all those Amazon Vans/Semi Fleet) late 2016/17. FedEx has lost $25B in revenue potential and Amazon gained $250B in profit specifically from its shipping growth/capabilities.
There was a *lot* more baked into the decision to drop Amazon than is displayed in those numbers. Amazon was playing a very smart game, using FedEx lift to move its lowest yield packages (thereby taking real advantage of the cost negotiated with Purple to move them).
The "revenue potential" that was lost (which was only 3% of Express' overall business) was producing only razor-thin profit margins anyway. What most folks didn't realize was that at the time of the divorce with Amazon, Purple had more domestic business than it had airlift to accept, and that other business had higher profit margins than the Amazon packages. Without Amazon, Purple is now free to go after that business that had previously been rejected.
What has *really* been hurting Purple financially recently is the combination of the China trade war, Brexit, and TNT integration. Those three have been massive punches to the bottom line, and are what is really responsible for the "we made less profit than Wall Street folks think we should have made" doom-and-gloom news of the last two quarters.
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I'm wondering when the 737 Max passenger-to-freighter conversion will be announced...and if Purple will be the launch customer, hehe.
Fred loves a good deal...and I bet there'll be a fire sale of customer return Maxes at some point.
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9 hours ago, Karl Hungus said:
If APC had existed, you’d read the same from a theoretical Delta forum in the mid-2000s.
APC started in early '05.
If anyone wants to do any archaeology and learn more about their airline's past, the "new" FlightInfo.com forums go back to about 2001. If you think APC is a monkeycrap fight, go check out ol' Flightinfo's archives!
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Don't forget that at UPS *everyone* is on the widebody pay scale and at FedEx about 69% of pilots are on widebody pay.
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On 11/20/2019 at 6:55 PM, bfargin said:
I tried for about 5 years to buy one of the Tweets in the boneyard. Contacted my Senator, some other DOD folks I know, etc with absolutely no luck. Even contacted the State Department about the possibility and it was pretty much a no-go unless the US eventually decided to sell them as scrap.
There are several repatriated export-sale Tweet airframes languishing around that could be made airworthy if you really wanted to.
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OP, if you don't know why, you haven't been paying attention. Good luck.
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8 hours ago, arg said:
Article doesn't say what attitude the plane was in when it touched down. Wondering about a right closed pattern with #4 shut down and possible problems with #3. The article states on #3 "two blades appeared in a position between low pitch and feather", that's where they're supposed to be, the other blade position near feather would mean some sort of material failure.
More likely "material failure" related to the engine getting thrown around post-crash after it separated from the wing.
If you watch the entire video (and with the understanding of the limited info the NTSB video provides) there are some clues to this, especially that the tips of the blades are not curled, as would be evident if the engine were turning at impact. Props rotating and producing power at impact are usually curled forward, while props rotating and not producing power at impact are usually curled aft.
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On 9/27/2019 at 8:13 PM, nunya said:
FedEx gives some weight to past aircraft experience. Dunno the details about how that plays out.
With the exception of the MD-11, all initial aircraft and domicile assignments for newhires are based on the last 4 of SSN (9999 highest, 0000 lowest). Newhires put in a dream sheet before day one of indoc, and available assignments are handed out in seniority order.
MD-11 assignments are selected separately, before day one of indoc by the company, and this is where previous experience is involved. Because of the finicky landing performance of the airplane, and the accident record at FedEx, they are looking for specific experience to send newhires to the airplane. For some reason they like Navy carrier guys, C-17 guys, and of course KC-10 guys, but that's not all inclusive.
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Those evil airsoft pellets!
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According to Salon:
Last Friday, Politico
reported that the House has been investigating a strange incident in which the Air Force made an unusual refueling stop at a small government-owned airport in Scotland that just happened to be next to Trump's failing golf course in Turnberry. The crew was befuddled at the order, and even more so when they ended up at Trump's pricey club, feeling out of place and without enough per-diem money to buy food and drink. It was, to say the least, unexpected.That's some world-class "reporting".
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13 hours ago, Bender said:
One of the big issues with UPT is we keep changing things and have made ZERO effort to analyze what the impacts of those changes have been. We celebrate those that promote change, promote them, send them to school, and then start working to change things again...without a sliver of desire to track anything or quantify anything.
"We care how things look, not how things are" is far from a UPT-centric problem.
That is a core AF competency, unfortunately, that is going to take a generation to un-screw.
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Biden got on the "mandatory assault weapons buyback" train a couple days ago, too.
How can you "buy back" what you have never owned to begin with??
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Just now, Bender said:
It’s been a long time since I had to be smart, but 0.5 doesn’t seem all that exciting. If 1.0 is perfect (-1.0 being negatively perfect), wouldn’t .5 mean maybe could mean something positive but only half sure?
Honestly couldn't tell you.
I do have a bunch of undergrad education in social statistics, but much of that at this point is lost to history. I had the pleasure of working with Dr Patterson and Dr Carretta down at Brooks back in the mid '00s while I was going through a medical issue, though, and I did hear them discuss this topic (the validity of various methodologies in selecting pilot candidates) in detail.
They had piles and piles of data that they were constantly compiling and evaluating, and were eager to tweak their algorithms when they found something new.
They were actually quite excited that the PCSM had held up with a correlation that was statistically significant over time (at that point, more than a decade of use and something like 10,000 pilots it had been used on).
Beyond that, I'm out of my depth in this discussion. I don't know if Carretta is still working for the AF, but Patterson has since retired...might want to look them up and ask the question if you're really interested in an informed answer.
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32 minutes ago, MCO said:
No, a good PCSM from what I saw was just a decent indicator.
There's actually a pretty close statistical correlation between PCSM and success at UPT.
Anecdotes aside, that's what the data says. That's kind of the entire point behind its existence.
To wit:
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-11428-002
Pilot Candidate Selection Method: Still an effective predictor of US Air Force pilot training performance.
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On 8/31/2019 at 3:44 PM, M2 said:
WTF is this?
Obviously it's two F-104 Starfighter pilots from 1960; but what the hell are those berets about?!?
Can't speak for those fellas, but one of the now-F-15E squadrons wore berets at one point back in the day, too: the 492d "Madhatters". They picked up the squadron nickname from having adopted the headgear local to where they were based (and the unit moved around quite a bit in the postwar/interwar years) and that included berets while in France.
Since they're UK-based now, it is a British bowler hat currently.
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On 8/30/2019 at 9:02 PM, Bender said:
You a fan of loaded questions? Why not provide your own intelligent perspective on PTN rather than offer it up like meat to lions?
Jim is a retired F-111 WSO, so he doesn't know. He's asking those who do, since it doesn't seem to make sense to someone with plenty of military aviation experience but who has been away from the game for a while. I can see why, from his perspective, it seems like a very stupid idea.
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18 hours ago, Standby said:
Makes sense that attrition was higher when everybody flew the T-38.
...and when a UPT Wing Commander's job effectiveness wasn't measured using graduation rate.
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As I've frequently posted, this is the annual total UPT attrition per FY (from the AF's circa 2001 study of effectiveness of UPT student selection methods).
There are plenty of individual class at individual base snapshots that show extremely high attrition, but given these overall numbers there were obviously classes with substantially higher graduation percentages that offset the high numbers.
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What's wrong with the Air Force?
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Hacker
Results were mixed, to be fair, but skewing heavily toward being not very successful. I've posted on baseops previously about the half-dozen guys I knew who'd done it and the difficulties they faced in the fighter world. All high-achievers, fantastic dudes, and excellent officers (and obviously great aviators in whatever heavy platform they came from), but the majority not particularly well suited to decisionmaking at the speed and G of the fighter business.
My take, based on the guys I personally interacted with, was that it wasn't a talent issue so much as it was an experience issue, but that the experience early on in a pilot's career was important to their performance further on down the line.
All that being said, it was the only time in "recent history" that the writer's idea was actually attempted, so I'd think that the data would be useful to evaluating the hypothesis.