gearhog

It's also important for people to realize there's a large spectrum of opportunities that exist between being a commuter and living in domicile. You don't have to commit to one or the other for your entire career. We have "in-domicile" people that walk 10 minutes to work, ride the train for an hour and a half, drive a couple hundred miles, or sit in bumper to bumper traffic for hours. Some commuters two-hop across country or take a 45 min flight each way. There are people who commute to live on the farm, lakehouse or in the mountains part of the year and sit-reserve in domicile out of a home, condo, apartment, RV part of the year. Some regularly change domiciles just for something different. I can sometimes modify trips to start or end at my commute airport. Families are a the biggest consideration and I've got two years until the kids are in college. I've been a commuter for 10 years and I would do it again without hesitation to live where we wanted. However, I intend intend on keeping our home while living in-domicile part-time elsewhere in the future.

I can't do a decent job explaining it but i'll try. First let me say I have an inclination toward cynicism. Be it innate or just bitterness over organizational failures I've seen in the AF. My bullshit detector for insincere platitudes and pep-talks is always on high gain. I also know that the SWA culture is often derided as a "cultish" by outsiders. It kinda is, but I'm buying it. It all goes back to Herb. He knew most everyone's names, he hugged and even kissed all his employees, dudes included. Yeah I know, sounds gay. He drank, smoked, and threw wild parties. He was serious about cutting through the B.S. and making airplanes fly. His philosophy was "Take care of the employees first, and the customers will come." Herb is gone and SWA is a big airline now with big airline problems. Many aspects of the old SWA culture has dwindled, but a lot of it still exists. I won't go into everything, but there's books written on it and it's Fortune magazine's 11th most admired company in the world, behind #10 FedEx, and I can see why. Here's just a few things. When I walk in the pilot lounge to check in for my trip, I get a hug from the ladies in the base coordinator office. If the Chief or Asst. is walking thru, he'll stop, handshake, crack a joke and visit. I often get hats, pins, cards, and other things in the mail for no good reason. All the company communications emphasize real positives. FAs often bring snacks, we often buy ops agents and gate agents coffee, new Captain upgrades typically serve hot dog lunches in the lounge one day. SWA throws big parties several times a year. The header of every paycheck says "Deposits made possible by your Southwest Customers." Maybe all this exists at other airlines too, I don't know. I just know I like where I'm at and I'm over 10 years in. I could just show up and get a paycheck for flying airplanes, and there are many pilots who do, but it's a heck of a lot more fun if there's an over-arching atmosphere of fun and positivity. And it doesn't feel fake when the company has the numbers to prove it's success. I know that all sounds touchy-feely and it probably doesn't count for much when most people just want to get paid big bucks as quick as possible for working as little as possible. But once you've experienced it, it counts for something.

I'm at SWA because that's where I got hired first. Honestly, If I were beginning my airline career, I'm not entirely sure which I'd pick. Because I'm established, I wouldn't consider going anywhere else. The things I like about SWA: Financial fitness. SWA is absolutely killing it, and barring a disaster, I'll likely never need worry about my employment or company growth. Never a bankruptcy or furlough. I'll never need worry about retraining to a different fleet type. New aircraft incoming. The company culture is fantastic. Always within a couple time zones of home. 3 day trips. Line bidding with open time and trip trade/giveaway: I get about as many days off as I want or I can load up my schedule and make some serious cash. A Captain last July worked his schedule to over 400 tfp (approx 340 hours of credit) to make over $90K in one month. An outlier, but possible. The things I think would be nice at Delta would be the opportunity to fly widebody international if I so choose, maybe better commutability to bases. Most times I enjoy 12-18 hour overnights, but would sometimes like a long layover at a nice international destination. As Guardian said, the days you work, you're putting in full days at SWA. Sometimes 4-5 legs a day. Not sure about Delta. The range of earning opportunity is so wide with so many dependent variables at either place that I don't think you can make an accurate generalization about where you can make the most money. I think the average pilot at both places look at their paycheck and think "Not ing bad at all." "Comparison is the thief of joy." - T.R.

If your schedule has 15 days off, those days are yours. Your "reserve" days are considered "days on". For months without vacation, I typically bid to work four 3-day trips per month, Tues thru Thurs. I often work at the ANG in between. On rare occasion, I may feel unfit to fly, so 1 of those trips might get a sick call, and I have a stretch of 9-10 days off to recover. For vacation, I get 4 weeks per year. During the Sept vacation bid, I try to spread those weeks out across the year. This year I have a week in Feb, a week in Jun, and two weeks in Oct. In Feb, I'm taking my wife to the Caribbean for a few days, and South FL for a few days. We have line bidding so I bid trips that touched either side of my Feb vacation. Those trips are dropped with partial pay. I have just under 3 weeks off for 1 week of vacation. I don't really need that much time off in Feb, so I'll pick up additional flying for extra pay. My week in June will easily be three weeks off should I want, and plan on taking 2 weeks for a west coast vacation with the kids. October is my favorite time of year for working around the home/farm, so I bid the first and fourth weeks of vacation and typically pick up one or two desirable 3-4 day trips somewhere in the roughly 6 weeks off. Last year, I spent 15 days in Oct driving around Europe with the entire family, flying standby there and back. On Active duty, I always carried over 30 days of leave balance and always felt pressured (admittedly sometimes self-induced) to not take more than a week at a time due to the weight of all my responsibilities/additional duties. The differences between AD and Airlines in the ability to travel and have stress-free time off is nowhere near a reasonable comparison.

Downloading some more dank memes while sitting on the shitter outta cheer you up.

I had to google "chidi". I'm guessing it's a reference to a broadcast network TV sitcom that you watch? I guess that's still a thing. Anyway, sick burn, bro. 😂

Damn dude, so racist. Red dot!

False dichotomy. The question of "brotherhood" or "camaraderie" is a question of infinite variables in people and personality that's constantly changing. There's a spectrum-wide range of mission, leadership, location, aircraft, ops temp, etc in either org. There's also an equally wide range of people in every unit, be it AD or AFR/ANG. Generally speaking, you'll find more good people than not and the quality of your relationships with your coworkers depends entirely on you, not the branch of service. There's no difference, and you'll only get anecdotal evidence based on limited experience with any answer to this.

Sounds like someone spiked your drink without you knowing. It's a single variable on a very long and complex application process. Many disqualifying items stipulate "having a history of....". A one off event, to me, does not indicate you having a history of an underlying medical condition or even a behavioral issue. But it's subjective, I'm not a flt doc, and in my experience most flight docs wouldn't care. However, there's a chance you face a bad flight doc on a bad day. What are you going to do? Not apply? Go for it. Don't divulge. Don't lie.

So what's the problem? That's just the Guard, man. Administrative processes are always measured in months, not days. Especially at NGB. Only 5 people work there, and they're all traditional working every other week, Tues-Thurs, 0900-1100 and 1300-1500.

Self-inflicted with a handgun. Good dude. Would have never imagined it.

He's a dishonest huckster because you believe you've found a semantical flaw in the phrase "cultural Marxism" that he uses in a few of his arguments? He repeatedly admits he is open to the idea that there could be errors in his logic, and seeks to find intellectually honest debates to find "truth". You're simply dismissing the entirety of the man's ideas because you disagree with the way he placed two words together, yet you're providing no original alternatives to any of them... and it took you 4 paragraphs to do it, which reeks more of pseudo-intellectualism than anything he has said.

Has anyone had a GTC negatively affect their credit score? I was recently scheduled for a sim, our RA purchased airline tickets using my GTC thru SATO. The Guard Bureau cancelled the sim due to end of FY lack of funds. My orders were cancelled, my sim was cancelled, and my airline tickets were cancelled 2 days prior. I had a bunch of SATO fees with no way to create an authorization or voucher without orders. Long story short, no one could figure out (or were willing to try) how to pay the pill in DTS with no orders, and Citi eventually suspends my card and says the charges are going to a collection agency and will be reflected on my credit score. So I pay it out of my own pocket, late, to avoid further headaches. Today, I get an email saying my score has changed, but I have zero debt any where, for any thing. The connection between Experian and USAA is down so I am unable to view the negative factors.

But I think it should be, sometimes. Most of us volunteer to serve and expect that our efforts and sacrifices for the common good of the people and ideas we value will be somewhat apparent. We've probably all had experiences where our service, our rush to the aid of others, was so deeply satisfying that we wish we could have sacrificed more and wished for nothing in return. When it's not so apparent, say when training or doing administrative/bureaucratic jobs, you may be able to convince them that the fruits of their service exist, but you need to compensate them and accommodate a reasonable amount of their desires. However, when a person too often sees that their efforts and sacrifices are either squandered or even detrimental to what they believe they are serving, they stop believing that what they're doing is actual "Service", and no amount of finger wagging while repeating "Service before Self" is going to make them stick around.

I understand the necessity to correct the misconceptions, it's just that the corrections don't change the result. That result being: This is not something a Guard guy should feel compelled to accept.

Start here at 21:35, then watch the entire interview: Then here: Then checkout the Sam Harris and Joe Rogan Experience podcasts with Peterson, Weinstein, Dave Atilla, etc.

That's a vague accusation. Either the threat exists or it doesn't. You acknowledge that it exists, you're just disputing your interpretation of an unspecified individual's statement of how great the threat is. Hardly qualifies an argument that the whole board is sucking it's own c^&*,

I'm in a Guard unit that my be tagged for an AFG air advisor tasking in 2019. I'm having a hard time understanding your post because I don't know what positions your speaking from or about. I may be wrong, but your post and Homestar's post seem to be defending the assignment. Are you saying it's a good deal for a guard guy, or bad, but not that bad...?

I'm hopeful that this PC culture is about to experience a massive backlash. If the momentum the "intellectual dark web" movement is gaining with people like Sam Harris, Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, etc, is any indication, we'll soon be able to relax a little.

What in the actual F? I clearly heard him say "F'n" the first couple times I watched it, then I could not hear it again. Bizarre

God bless ya for doing what you're doing, but for clarification, you're arguing with a guy who is making the case it sucks. Are you saying it's a good deal or are you just saying your facts for substantiating that it is a shit deal are better than his facts for substantiating its a shit deal?

Say you're tagged as an Afghan Air Advisor. You go. You make the best of it and give it your best effort. You even build friendships with good people. Then this is the result: https://www.stripes.com/news/assassins-threaten-multibillion-dollar-us-efforts-to-keep-afghan-airmen-flying-1.552494 Worth it?

Heard a nasty rumor a Herc unit may be getting tagged for this in 2019. I guarantee every traditional IP's hand is spring loaded to smash the "F this I'm out" button like a contestant on Family Feud.

Damn. His resignation letter speaks volumes. Concerning.

Instead of telling people to do the right thing and intervene when someone does dumb shit, we are supposed to use the words “red dot!” when we speak to indicate something bad is happening. Then we say, or be, or do a “green dot” something or other that is supposed to mean being proactive in doing the right thing. It’s idiotic and makes you want to choke someone.