8 months

So much good, applicable and affordable training / experience / airmanship building could be done vs meaningless busywork

Already posted this musing but whatever

$175k ish would buy a good deal of tailwheel, acro, AMEL time and a type course in a transport category sim, travel costs included

But… here we are.

Somehow other Air Forces seem to figure out how to keep a multi engine trainer program going, not that only multi engine training is ailing in the Air Force

Italians are getting the Piaggio 180

Key Aero

Modernising ITALY’S multi-engine training

New generation Piaggio P180s The Italian Air Force’s air transport...

From the article:

The typical course of Phase 3, for pilots aiming to gain their military wings for the multi-engine fleets, lasts about seven months and includes 60 flying hours, plus 51 hours in the simulator. This equipment is provided by Alsim which is representative of a generic multi-engine jet aircraft. As mentioned earlier, SATA will receive a new simulator from Piaggio Aerospace, representative of both the VC-180B and the VC-180C versions.

If they can afford it we can too.

On 12/27/2025 at 9:44 AM, NoFlyZone said:

Broad answer most heavies outside of AFSOC from the stuff I’ve been hearing but no way to tell if they are working on it or content with the fact that AETC is “technically” reaching the desired numbers of winged UPT grads.

and @Boomer6 yeah I wish I considered it more because they funnel guard/reserve through as quickly as they have in the past. That’s another conversation that I’m sure has been discussed on this forum with whether or not they should fast track guard people when active duty is so backed up but I don’t need to open that can of worms here

What’s causing the delay?

@Polar Bear as far as I’m aware it’s just that the FTUs aren’t ready for the influx of pilots. They fixed the UPT problem but seemed to forget that the FTUs need to be just as fast for it to mean anything effectively.