hindsight2020

Big thing is that 3rd class medical priviledges on all medical certificate classes are now valid for 60 months (under 40y.o) as opposed to previously 36 months. My interpretation is that if your medical expired under the old reg before the new reg was published, you're SOL, you won't be able to re-claim it as now valid. If you have a current one by the date of publising, your existing medical now benefits from the new periods. It's only 70-80 bucks for an AME visit man....but hey, they came out with this sport pilot neato thingy, they let you buzz around with a valid US driver's license, no lie. Well actually, they do only if you don't have a record of being denied an FAA medical certificate in the past. So the guy with quadruple bypass surgery who just decided to become a pilot cause he might die tomorrow can fly around a sport plane because he's never applied (and therefore been rejected) for a medical. While they guy who lost their medical can't become a sport pilot with their valid drivers license cause essentially "the FAA already knows about you". Crazy but I digress....

SQ/CC here vouches for all flyers; since we can at any point be asked to fill the schedule to go hack the mission (what a concept...) it's bag wear here all the way. Guard/Reserve biotches woot woot! F$ck, I love my union job. AFR...stickin' to the (career)Man since '48.

I don't know what the big deal is about CFI equivalency. Honestly, flight training in a military environment is very different than operating in civilian, mostly VFR environment with piston engine equipment. The only argument that I recognize as reasonable is, once again, the cost of taking a written test versus going through the cost of CFI certificate(s), which in this brave new world can get quite expensive. Furthermore, nobody really has their civi CFI as a backup plan to exiting the Air Force and not having an airline option pan out, seriously. Even if one were to try an pursue a position at an established 141 school or a university program, the paycut would still be substantial and few would pursue it. I think it's another example of "uh, uh, free sh$t yeeeeiii" without recognizing the full reality of what it actually takes to be in a safe position to act as a flight instructor. I think it's a bad idea personally, when your student has more time in make and model than the instructor. I don't care how much space shuttle PIC you got, you have no business giving primary to a kid on a 172 when you consider yourself "spun up and good to go" by virtue of a FAA databank test a 3rd grader cold pass by closing their eyes and x-mas tree'ing the thing. I see it all the time with tailwheel checkouts, all sorts of types with turbine types squireling, porpoising, bouncing down the runway on a cub or citabria..I'm telling ya, it's just different and like everything takes a little spool up time. Spool up time for a civilian CFI should be at a minimum going thru the certificate training, which for any outfit worth their salt will require at least 10 hours of dual given with the candidate on the right seat, and both left seat and right seat time for commercial manuever proficiency. That would of course make it worthwhile to those who wish to use their rating, and sufficiently deter the the mil competency "uh free sh%t and credentials, lets go rent a Seneca and crash" crowd.

I don't think it matters. You can take advantage of his CA address and do your car registration thru the state of CA. Or you can continue to renew your tags and registration in the new state as you move. I think it would probably be more convenient to get the car registered in CA and as you move through states you don't have to deal with the car registration hassles for new states, to include excise tax waiver forms for every new state etc. In essence y'all are taking advantage of hubby's HOR and keeping everything CA. Regarding driver's licenses, again it doesn't matter. Keep your license as it is, or change it to CA using your husband's HOR address if you want, again it's more of a convenience factor than burden of proof for state tax purposes. I have my car registered in state A where we live, have a license from state B and my HOR state is state C; for AD there is no residency jeopardy attached to having licenses and car registrations in states other than the service member's HOR. Now, for the civilian spouse if you are employed in state X, you will obviously pay taxes on income earned on that state (if they have state tax). But as it pertains to licenses and car registrations, it's a mere matter of convenience for the civi spouse, so proceed as it suits ya. Good luck.

This was an all-AD crew.

The seats are independent systems, there's no setting to fire in conjunction with any other. Individual stations have to fire their own seat to eject.

'2' As an engineer in my formative education I know where you are coming from. I understand the concept of constraints within design and accept where the B-2 falls within that spectrum of consideration, but I consider the oportunity cost of a whole expensive a$$ UFO as a little high for the luxury of a fancy-schmancy pitot static system interface, presumably for the benefit of low observability contentions. If you got to babysit that epoxy-wonder THAT much so it doesn't in effect come unglued on you, it does eat into the capabilities expected of said airframe; again constraints within design, but also constratins operationally, and this current state of affairs doesn't make the B-2 as mean and lean as was advertised when it comes to battle and environmental realities, which mind you have been here since the Trench war. This is not an issue of FLCS and lack of pilot override, this is an extreme case of queertrons taking the pilot out of the equation, and thats BS. Slapping a pitot tube and a mechanical AOA vane (the irony...) would have inhibited said accident from ever becoming reality. I'm conjecturing as to the impact on RCS that move would have, but I'm willing to bet it's not greater than or equal to the cost of producing and employing the whole airplane. In the end this is part of the growing pains the AF is and will continue to endure when it comes to the maintenance of composite-based aircraft, which the Air Force is still at an apprentice level (and unfortunately fails to recognize it, if for its own sake). Similar issues will arise with the F-22 and 35, mark my words. I'm confident they'll get a handle on the sensor issue, but the solution will be 'throw more glue and cure time at it', which is rather unimpressive. This is where I think the AF could do a better job moving forward. Then again I'm just a biased Buff driver, my airspeed indicator goes out all the time and I just look out the front window: "wings still level, yep, no buffeting, yep, VVI, yep, hey e-dub hold the fajitas till we get the fuel flows to fly this thing...", granted a pair of ragheads holding rabbit ears in a hill in Afghanistan can see me doing touch and go's in Louisiana but I digress. TC

The academic differences might not be as relevant as the financial differences, as it pertains to the lowly individual member. In my opinion the AFRC has a better pot of money and pay structure (title 10 all the way) than your garden variety ANG unit. From my anectodal experience, between friends in the Guard, and those we have absorbed from BRAC'ed Guard units, I've come to the conclusion that everything else being equal (big assumption) you have a better opportunity to make money and less chance of consolidation at a AFRC unit than a ANG unit. So that's my take on ANG vs. AFRC, mileage may vary as always. Of course I'm not even including the historically (way way in my experience) faster timeline for the AFRC to push you through training compared to the NGB, which everybody agrees it's like pulling teeth with the ANG. That said, location and airframe preferences will temper any individual preference towards either organization. My point is that when I looked at differences, these issues were the ones I considered relevant and I'm glad I'm AFRC today. Good luck.

True, but composite materials and construction pose a different set of problems for maintenance, requires a lot of baby-sitting, and it is in relative infancy within the context of military employment. Only time will tell how these airframes will fare long-term, as the new generation of F-22/35 type airplanes begin replacing your metal alloy garden variety airframes. From my experience studying aircraft structure life issues, IMO the AF underestimates and ultimately downplays the operating reality of composite material-based airframes, and that will become evident in a decade. Adding the AF's trend of being 90 degrees off-phase in anything (personnel, retention, cyber you name it) it's not too much of a warm fuzzy as to how they'll deal with the paradigm shift of composites, not from an engineering point of view, but from an application angle (i.e MX group hyper-cycled Amn snuffy issues).

man, I hate to say it, but sounds like enlisting in the AF was the worst thing you could've done to become an AF pilot. Holy crap. Not to monday morning quarterback or anything, but why couldn't you have just gone to college, get the degree and applied to OTS? Heck, even Guard/Reserve; it just seems silly, since we've all had speeding tickets of at least that number in any ten year period, and it was NEVER an issue when applying from the outside. That situation, if you're describing it accurately, is just dumb brother, separate and give the Guard a go, AD sucks anyways (I kid I kid..not). Besides, PRP sucks, my hat's off to the poor bastards on it.

"One weekend a month, two weeks a year" song ...Your two weeks a year is that AT period I was talking about and they are AD days (meaning they include BAH and BAS fractions). Most sorties take two AFTPs or UTAs, four hour periods each, so yes about 4 flights a month would be 8 periods of pay a month (4 UTAs and 4 FTPs a month) which is min guarantee evenly spread over 12 months. And yes, mandays are active duty days, and those extra flights you say you'll pick up a week most likely come in the form of a manday pay-wise. You have to understand that flights per month is not necessarily a good descriptor of pay in the Guard/Reserve. You have to start thinking of it in terms of pay periods to fully grasp how to maximize pay. It is for the most part a part-time job, and the pay reflects that reality. You either have the choice of being a true traditional and do your min plus certain trips here and there you want to jump into, or you can be a bum/trougher and maximize your pay by trying to work as many days as possible at the unit with the cost of not having/being able to hold a civilian job. Sometimes the unit doesn't have that many man days a week to provide you to make it possible for you to bum, or you have fellow bums and people in your relative seniority at the unit bidding for the same man day pot to make the split too thin for you to pursue it. Or it can be plentiful, it all depends on the unit and their current funding situation. So yeah 2 man days a week is alright money for a part-timer who has his/her schedule shacked (good luck for the commuter types) but not quite enough if you're going to make it your primary (and in the case of flying Guard jobs in general, sometimes the only possible job, schedule wise) source of income. The figures I posted before are ballparks, BAH rates will be more specific depending on location of course, and your dependent status. In addition to man days there are also sets of orders out there where people are basically AD for a period of time. Much like the seasoning orders one is likely to be put on right as you hit the unit. Then there are 1 week or 2 week trips to wherever in support of excercise whatever where you get a chunk of active duty days right there by partaking in that. There are also non-flying duties at the squadron one may get man days for, and that was part of the reason I mentioned using pay periods as a gauge for pay and not flights, because you can get paid by taking advantage of non-flying duties sometimes; it may not paint you well (as a bum at least) if all you show your face at the squadron for is for a flying trip, although for many traditionals that's their bread and butter and that's ok too unit-dependent. So the moral of the story is that there are ten ways to skin that cat, but yeah 30K by working 2 additional man days a week on top of guarantee ain't going to set you up on easy street, you'll most likely need a full-time civilian job. Getting one more day a week and snagging sets of orders, TDY types etc is a more realistic goal if you want to survive on just a Guard job. Good luck

Guarantee for a traditional guard/reservist is 48 UTA periods, 48 AFTP and 14(15 for Guard) periods of AT. For a O-1 min running it that comes out to about 12K. You won't fly 8-10 times a month by flying the min guarantee. You'll need man days or full-up orders to fly more. Mandays are worth more than AFTPs and UTA (drill) periods (the latter two are worth the same as you said) because they include the fraction of BAH (type II if orders less than 30 days...i.e. most revolving week to week man days) and BAS per period. So I don't know how many man days you'll get in order to fly 8-10 times a month but you won't be a 2LT for very long . By the time you get done with all training and get back to the unit you'll have less than six months left before you pin on 1LT. Add to that the possibility of being put on seasoning orders anywhere between 3 months to a year you'll be well into 1LT pay by the time you hit part-time status. But for your general info, 2 man days a week plus min guarantee for a 1LT is 28K, 3 man days a week ~36K, 4 man days a week ~43K, location dependent of course. Good luck.

Can't believe you're debating this as a young guy. Having troughing as the only source of income in town (my situation) you'd be crazy not to take the ART job. I'd give my left one to be in your position. The trough can dry up in an instant. Now what are you gonna do as a low time guy? Go back to engineering (my degree as well)? Hell no!.... Brother, take that ART and don't look back. I'm in your situation but a little behind the timeline. I moved to my unit city specifically because I didn't have enough time for a major airline (screw the regionals) job and I'm not interested in commuting. The trough is going to put food on my table until I can snag an ART job and as sh$tty as depending on a variable income job with no backup employment is, I'd take the potential of a future ART position over any airline job, nevermind one I have to commute to AND sit reserve for. Of course I value my time at home and don't consider 12 days of work straight where I'm home every night even remotely as bas as commuting a single week, and the ART pay satisfies my family expectations. Congratulations on the ART offer.

Which is kinda foul for a FAIP. On the Buff side a FAIP (who completes his assignment) goes straight to ACIQ. Yep, no gear bitch for you on curtain #2 bob. Sweeeeeet! Other than that, what afnav said. For a place where people find solace in deployment stability Buff land ain't happy camp lately (has it ever?) with the shifting going on. Plenty of unused sunblock north of, and hysterical fiancés south of the mason-dixon line. As to the co overmanning issue, it is a fact on the buff, and tami and other morale "vectors" are doing their part to worsen the situation. I would say the bone situation yields a similar effect; whether the lack of resources comes from MX axing or it is true co overmanning, you're not getting love as a co on the Bone period.. I've yet to see anybody argue the manning of IP/experienced ACs on either bomber is adequate and guess what, that affects your upgrade and flying negatively as a co on the bone a little more, since it doesn't have the "clown car" feature. Not that riding in a clown car is my version of flying but I digress. Standard red headed stepchild treatment. If I were a UPT stud today and I had to hedge my bets I'd say the best deal out there is getting FAIPed. Surest way of getting to fly for six years straight and gain AC/IP status = options in the process. IMO. see ya!

That's because he'll be going thru T-38 IP qual and flying bueno no-threat X/C all that time on the AF dime. Personally I wouldn't care if he won't see the B-2 in two years, he'll fly 2x as much as your avg bone/buff bob and in that time won't be gear-b$tching it, time-splitting with other overmanned-UAV-slatted co's in the flying can either. Then as a parting away present he gets to fly something that actually stands a snowballs' chance in hell of making it in double-digit airspace. I'd say it's a pretty decent gig for a bomber dude. Knob Noster ain't all that, KC is alright, but beats the alternative in my book. That or he just got a sweet casual period lol

Great in theory (and if single) , but that scent wears off in time, ask some people who've done it ad naseaum, particularly in this political environment. It ain't Normandy... Bomber deployments in general are fairly benign. Tropical destination boring circles above japanese tourists and you technically never left the United States. A ride there on CAL would have been more comfortable than on a 57 year old aluminum bucket seat that's for sure. gty pretty much nailed it in the head (holy STS batman) about the bomber comparison.

haha, wait till they get introduced to PRP, Minot, seat swaps with helmet/parachutes, and avionics that make you feel like flying around in RAM... Seriously though it's the best thing that could happen to the community; however if I were a graduating T-1 bubba today they'd be no way in hell I'd go ACC with a 10ft pole, if I had any expectation of actually flying in the AF past a tour. We'll see how quickly that catches on over at the tone side. My uninformed guess says once people become informed (several classes out), bombers will be nowhere near the top of most studs dream sheets.

My advice to you as someone who spent 7 years of his life getting engineering degrees to end up a pilot is, change majors. You are on the correct train of thought by safeguarding your GPA. The AF doesn't care about technical degrees or what school they came from, they care about you having a degree and having a good GPA. As long as you have a pulse and a good GPA, categorizing as a pilot on ROTC shouldn't be a problem (medical pending of course). I'll let ya do a search on your own about how much "piloting" you'll actually do as an AF pilot in some airframes/communities. Good luck in college and whatever you end up doing.

Well, by no means I suggested one shouldn't care about the pay situation. I can vouch for how uncomfortable the thought of not having a guaranteed paycheck can be. That said, it is part of the choices one makes as a low-time guy. My heart truly goes out to the full civi types in aviation. One has to recognize just how much more favorable the pay situation is for a Guard dude, having at least SOME re-assurance that there is some way to legitimately supplement one's income while working for a regional if the need would arise to do work there (as opposed to having been born with a trust fund; not because I wouldn't take advantage of it myself if I was in such position, but because it is disingenuous to offer it up to the rest of us non-lucky f$cks as a way to making ends meet). It is pretty clear by your post that you goal is to make a living out of flying professionally. That being the case I am here to tell you that you will NOT enjoy the AD, and really are better off pursuing the Guard/Reserves. I was just having this discussion with a ACIQ guy who just got back from an ALO tour. He concedes that no way in hell he would have felt it was a good deal taking 3 years off the cockpit if he intended to shoot for airline work, and he's pretty clear (as of right now anyways) that he'll prob be a lifer, and getting yanked out of the cockpit again will proably not disuade him from finishing his 20. The point with that tale is that you have to assess what your career direction is, in your case I would STRONGLY recommend you do NOT sign that AFROTC categorization commitment, and instead pursue the Guard option. You will take a paycut from your AD 1LT types when you get back to the unit as a bum, but it doesn't mean you'll necessarily starve. As I mentioned in my previous post, worse case you have to pursue a regional airline and have to make tough decisions in terms of where to relocate to (living in domicile or living at the Guard unit) in order to make working at the regional worththile (hint: live on domicile if you can, I'm telling ya you can't afford to commute to a regional gig, Guard baby or full up civi alike). Best case, you could successfully bum (unit dependent, some are rich on mandays some not, some have other jobs the AD could give you and put you on orders for a while, some not, there's tons of iterations to bumming) to stay afloat until you can either get offered an ART job (unlikely but who knows) or in conjunction with a regional gig where u can make a comfortable living until you can get enough TPIC to make it to your preferred major. Bullet-proof plan? Hardly. BUT, it's a flying job and lifestyle, and that has a non-economic value as we previously discussed. All in all, I respect and agree that there is peace of mind in making an AD paycheck versus slugging it out as a Guard crew dog, but you're flying for a living at the end of the day in the latter, so to each their own. You also have to understand that life is not fair, there is a point where this career gets priced out for some folks. You are in your mid 30s with a family, brother you're gonna make your family go thru hell if you intend to live off the bottom pay scales of the pilot profession. For some people it became just too late. Be glad you'll be barely off college, where your expenses and family commitments allow you the flexibilty to find creative ways around regional scale FO pay, being a Guard/Reserve bubba one of the really good chips to hold, heck best-case it might allow you to forego the regionals completely. Good luck in your decision, the application process and competition sucks, the wait sucks, the not making that great steady AD paycheck sucks too, but in the end, it was the best decision career wise I could have ever made and I'm not concerned about the 3 years it took me to get in.

Well, I disagree on some of the points. What folks haven't mentioned here though is what exactly constitutes a "flying gig" in the AD. I'm here to tell you that it's not flying airplanes. The bulk of your job in the current AF is to swim through the swamp of "additional duty" jobs while you find a way to get to fly, and once you do, maxizime your time in a flying seat instead of riding passenger with the other 10 co-pilots in the jet. The only thing AD has going for it is the salary, which compared with a fresh dude at a Guard/Reserve, can't be matched on a dollar for dollar basis. But NOT the flying when compared to the RC. I can vouch for that, going on 3 months of, you guessed it, NOT flying, at the SCHOOLHOUSE for Christ Sake, sharing with my AD brethren the joys of chem gear training, getting treated like a freggin 5th grader over e-mails about who left the light at the popcorn machine on, who hasn't turned in their Self-aid Buddy care certificates yet, et al ad nauseum. Using UPT as a yardsitck for what flying is like in the AD is the biggest mistake one could make. I wouldn't mind dealing with office politics if my job was to fly airplanes as advertised, but when that's not even the case, forgive me for opting out. Diffrn' strokes... People are also not painting the complete picture talking about Palace Chase. The process is a crapshoot. AFPC has the prerrogative to NOT let you off the hook, even if you are on the up and up with the gaining Reserve Component unit. So there is a lot to be said about that. You are in a much better position to search for units NOW, and forego the commitment. I'm telling you, if what you care about is to get to FLY for a living, the Reserves and Guard is where it's at. AD is NOT about flying for a living. Also, when people here throw "a couple of years" when talking about Palace Chase, they mean the bulk of your ADSC. If you PC within your first assignment, you're not far off ahead the off-the-street Guard baby in terms of employability in civi aviation, but the guard baby sure went through much less a$$pain to be in the same spot. So let's not be disingenuous about Palace Chase; it is a reactive measure, not a proactive one. Proactive is to have done your homework before you signed the dotted line versus getting the morale beat out of you in the AD and realizing you should have gone Guard and hence decided to PC. So consider the source, and that goes for my own bias too. Lastly, the argument about regional airlines is also not being painted complete. I agree, pay at the regionals suck, but when you're a guard bum and the man day pot is running dry, you may have no choice but to work for a regional. I buy staying in the black working a regional would be highly questionable, but I want amcflyboy to expand as to why he feels it has such a predisposition to get you non-current at the unit. I haven't seen that so far. You can drop trips at the regional without much repercussion, and God knows one shouldn't feel bad about it, since they get what they pay for, so getting your 96 UTA/TP and 14 AT on the year shouldn't be a problem even working a regional. Now, what I don't have much sympathy for is the guys who decide to commute to their regional job. I understand if the wife has a good but non-replicable job and doesn't want to live in Memphis or "insert city your wife wouldn't want to get caught dead moving to", but other than that, man that's just dumb. If your unit is starving you, and you need the regional job cause you're a low-timer (for disclosure, I'm in that exact category as an off-the-street to UPT type), common sense tells you to live in domicile and commute to the Guard gig, not the other way around. But that's worst case; best case, you live at the unit and bum, and forego the regional. I just don't buy that one goes non-current at the unit by virtue of working a regional (provided you live in-domicile). As to being a broke bum, point taken. But that's an opportunity cost one evaluates for oneself. If I wanted a paycheck right NOW I would have taken that depressing engineering job I was running away from in the first place by going Guard; but it wouldn't have done squat for my career advancement in aviation. So the fallback value of a civilian career is over-rated when assessing the "value" of being a broke young Guard baby. My CFII has more fallback value than 2 engineering degrees I haven't used going on 2 years since I left school, and I doubt they would get me squat job-wise in a decade when I would be 10 years+ non-experienced in the field, and the employer is going "WTF you want a job here for? we can't use you". Also, you won't be a 1LT at the unit forever. Once you make CAPT your minimum guarantee comes to 17-20K, that's straight up min running it, so you add 20K to any civi flying job, including first year pay at most regionals, and you can get a livable wage. Upgrade to Captain at the civi job, and now you have a decent wage combined with your guard boost (however much or little you work it/the unit can afford for you). In the same 5 years you're sucking sand in you ALO tour, out of the jet , going no-shit non-current, and NOT flying. My point is let's compare apples to apples, there are reasons for the pay disparities and they have more to do with personal choices than what mother blue tells you you should do career-wise. Just some food for thought, in my experience I get AD peers at least two a week asking me "how does the Guard/Reserve work/can you hook a brother up?" and hardly folks the other way around. Man that's a lot of smart dudes who are depressingly behind the curve when it comes to having done their homework (after I advise them that as a new guy I couldn't hook my own self up if I wanted to LOL). Take my post for what it's worth (free advice) and use it to compare and contrast and come up with what works for you. Good luck brother.

Well that's what happens when you generalize, you can over-reach. By your standard, you just called out 75% of the Guard Reserve bubbas out there, and practically all the airline dudes. If it makes you feel better, the above specimen (the regional dude fishing for Guard slots) is the minority in terms of getting hired, these folks are historically behind the hiring power curve because of age mostly, as they spent their 20s toiling at the regionals, in that regard I do agree with you. I have no sympathy for the 29 year olds out there who had the "come to Jesus" moment last week, and decided their regional job, or 80K/yr desk jobs, is unfulfilling and are hustling to get someone to waive their sh$t and get in the door. it pays off to do your homework early about the Guard, and if somebody chose the RJ job because of a bad case of SJS, or you partied too hard during freshman year and last week you realized the benefit of getting the freggin' degree done and over with, then sorry you're turning 30 tomorrow. Now, that said, I'm not about to agree with you that everybody who chose not to be 'just anything' for the sake of being enlisted is somehow lacking in their character. I never considered the AD precisely because I had no interest in the qweep that is involved in being a 'pilot' in the active military, and we forego the salary for that decision. That's what being in the AFRC/ANG is about in the first place! That doesn't mean the work we pursue does not have merit, and in my experience Guard/Reserves bubbas chuckle at anything the AD folks have to say about it, since they know who the disgruntled group is. My heart goes out to the TAMI-21 crowd, but you have to do your homework in this world, I never did a day in ROTC while in college and yet I fully understood how someone can go from signing the pilot commitment to sucking sand in a non-flying billet for years, or ending up permanent partied at the Tyco airplane show. Being a crew chief has nothing to do with the self-valuation of your skills; you set the price, I knew that's what I wanted to do and busted my a$$ to get there, and in proper fairness a lot of crew chiefs got jobs at their units in my time interviewing with said units, and I also watched some of the same get non-recommended from IFF in my time at UPT, which is why I try not to generalize. Besides, I can point you to a couple million american 20-30 yo who sit at home with their 9-5 jobs and generally stay away from the fight and have no intention of giving an ounce of their time to anything military. They generally feel they're above it, and more commonly, feel economically able to avoid it. That classy bunch are yours and my neighbors btw. We're still here voluntarily, in spite of not !GASP! having been a crew chief before getting hired. Sure, there are plenty of dudes who hang around the unit when the hours are low, and min run the unit when SWA calls, some are not 100% transparent with their fellow civilian FOs at the civi gig and that's a shame, but that's the nature of the beast. Otherwise ,nominally speaking, most dudes in the Guard have an honest appreciation for the work they do, and not having enlisted to get that job generally doesn't get many people riled up. That at least has been my observation so far.

I rest my case. He wouldn't be caught dead on the technical track. I applaud your dad for being proactive and making lemonade out of a potential career pigeon-holing. But I gotta tell ya, there's a boatload of engineers who are planning to do just that: get an MBA so they can get themselves out of the technical drudge work hell, and into management, which by the way it is the only way to jump into six figure land; the technical side of engineering plateaus below six figures in most industries. Had he not pursued his MBA the tune of that song would be quite different. My point was that for the sake of being a pilot, you can see how the fallback value of the engineering degree becomes an even wider stretch, since the career skills you develop as a pilot have absolutely no correlation to most engineering jobs (unless you pitch the magic consulting gig), so by the time you would actually need the degree to save you, you'd be better off with an accounting degree, or a finance degree, or a nursing degree, or a..you catch my drift. Not that I'm saying choosing to be a pilot is that smart of a decision career-wise (airline work in the dump and such) but one has to choose some type of work that makes your life somewhat worthwhile. I was faced with that decision a couple of years ago and I still chose to become a pilot in spite of the unstable nature of such work. The prospect of starring at a CAD/CATIA scope all day made me physically sick to my stomach, I used to moonlight at a retail store catalog department part-time with a masters in engineering mind you, and as much as that job sucked I slept better at night knowing I was doing it for the money and I didn't have to take the job home with me like the aforementioned eng gig. All that said I admit that as a military pilot that decision was made easier since I would effectively be able to forego the regionals; for my fully-civilian counterparts to make the same decision would be much tougher starring at the regionals in the face. To those about to embark in the major picking deal, choose wisely, research the field, and if you're wanting to become an AF pilot, for your own sake do not fall for the "eng degree will give me an edge". Good luck

^ Hence why my sn is hindsight....In my own defense, the situation for the avg college freshman is a little more complicated, but in the end the advice above is about the honest truth. The problem is that most folks don't know what they want when they're 18 and a college freshman, and even if they said they did (I thought I did) you have NO idea what it's like to be an engineer...you really don't. Most people I know who continued to pursue the field after getting the degree did so because they were stuck, too far along the program to begin a new degree and with enough college debt they needed the d$mn job (such as myself). The other issue is this whole idea of the fallback value of the engineering degree. Let me tell you, there is none. I am in the same boat if I lose my medical clearance with an engineering degree as I would with a degree in economics. Engineering firms want recency of experience and relevance of experience. If you have none, (a pilot would have none) then you're at the start of the line, and they'd be hard pressed to give you a job, and even if you were to get it it'd be an entry-level position and a huge paycut for those getting out of the pilot game after a decade or so. Some people make it happen, those who were more interested in the tron gadgets than in being pilots, while they were pilots in the AF (there are quite a few of those, which baffles me but I'm just a dumb pilot with a smart degree lol), but most people wouldn't be able to hook that up. In the civie world, if you don't intern with some company for a while, forget it, you'll have a hell of a time getting a competitive eng job if you interview cold turkey; so that's for a recent grad, somebody trying to get back in the game as a fallback plan, *RexKWAnDO* ¡Forget it about it! Is it good general knowledge? Absolutely, plus people think you're smart in social circles, which helps in networking. Other than that, what he said, wayyyy too much BS to get to the same place, and it doesn't make you a better stick and rudder , not that all AF planes really require to have those skills to begin with..I keed I keed. Major in finance! Good luck

'astronaut' is going the way of 'fighter pilot' these days. A lot of qualified people have realized that devoting a the better part of 15 years to be competitive for an astronaut position, where years and years of training and sacrifice will culminate in maybe ONE 5-day trip in orbit and you're done (considering the end is near for the shuttle program), is not as appealing as when they thought about it when they were 5 years old, as the opportunity cost is too much. As for the alleged sabotage it doesn't surprise me. NASA is filled with thousands of people whose sole reason for being at NASA is some shattered dream of becoming an astronaut. This is not an exageration, I can't remember the amount of people I've talked to or associated myself through work or school that at one point or another tied their tenure at NASA with a "once upon a time I wanted to go for astronaut". People need to put the pipe down, working close to something to remediate the fact that you can't/aren't allowed to do that something does not make your life better, it still leaves you empty. Too much Kool-aid in that place, and ever since the crazy mallet and briefcase incident people have realized 'astronaut' is not even something to aspire to really, hence the shooting at Johnson a couple months ago and now the computer thing.

Generally speaking the answer is no. If you don't complete training you are released as your position was contingent upon successful completion of said training. To wash out academically at UPT, you have to bust three exams and be recommended for disenrollment. I think it is straight up buffonery to fail academically out of UPT but there is a weather test that a lot of people historically fail, and has put a fair share of folks over the magic number and into the elimination process. FWIW that weather test is on it's way out for that particular reason, it was a worthless test anyways. So nowadays it is even more clownish to fail academically. Medical washout is a more realistic way of disenrolling, but even then they'll work with you. The most common reason is airsickness and it has to be BAD for it to disqualify you. I've seen guys get washed back twice, sent to the voodoo doctor in SPS or RND, come back and puke their way into a freggin jet slot; T-45s for the NAVY but it was at VN in AF training, so the example stands. Others with chronic sinus problems that eventually require surgery get put on a looooong DNIF and still make it. Then again, there are others that do not, but my point is that barring a really bad problem, so long as you pace yourself and give your honest best effort you should be fine with airsickness and/or sinus problems. Hope that helps.