Aviation Continuation Pay (ACP - The Bonus)

[SurelySerious]

We rail against the AF for not giving us $100k a year bonuses but as you know they are restricted by what Congress authorizes. I remember a certain senator from Arizona had a big say in that. 🤷‍♂️
 
What I do think is totally f’d up, beyond belief, is that the AF doesn’t max out the bonus for every pilot to the $35k allowed. It’d be pennies on the dollar in their annual budget. 

That Senator did some great things, but he thought that the compensation he had in the 70s was sufficient and blocked a lot of progress on that front.

[ThreeHoler]

We rail against the AF for not giving us $100k a year bonuses but as you know they are restricted by what Congress authorizes. I remember a certain senator from Arizona had a big say in that. 🤷‍♂️
 
What I do think is totally f’d up, beyond belief, is that the AF doesn’t max out the bonus for every pilot to the $35k allowed. It’d be pennies on the dollar in their annual budget. 

That is still a Congress problem. The AF is required to present a business case for all pilot bonus offerings to prove that it is needed at a specific amount for each community.

It doesn’t help that the other Services say their pilot retention is “fine” and actively discourage increasing the bonus further.

[SurelySerious]

That is still a Congress problem. The AF is required to present a business case for all pilot bonus offerings to prove that it is needed at a specific amount for each community.

It doesn’t help that the other Services say their pilot retention is “fine” and actively discourage increasing the bonus further.

I’d argue it’s both AF leadership and Congress. Which AF leader has taken the business case to Congress and actually said, “we have a problem”?

[jazzdude]

One consideration is how do we best compare apples to apples. A doc with 6-9 years of training is what comparison in the flying world? By about 9 years in, the AF had spent probably thirty million to get me, one pilot, to where I was (experience/proficiency/capability wise). And the AF let that $30m pilot walk because they’re unwilling to pay a bonus amounting to .3%/year (assuming Rand rec of 100k/yr) of their current, total investment. $100k/yr would have been pretty damn difficult to walk away from...$35k, not even a second thought. 

There isn't an apples to apples comparison. The AF can hire a doctor off the street, it can't hire a pilot off the street. Recruitment and retention are two different problems.

The AF can rely on an outside training source to train doctors. So doctors have more choice in where they work, and can move in/out of the service relatively seamlessly. So if the AF has too many doctors, it can separate them easily, knowing that if they need more doctors in the future, they can just hire off the street.

If the AF could do the same for pilots, it would. But that wouldn't mean competing with legacies for pilots (with the pay that brings), it's really competing against the regionals and part 135 operators for pilots. Plus, what legacy pilot is going to quit to go on AD, and lose their seniority? Especially when they could just go to the ARC of they want to scratch that itch.

The retention of flying experience is in the ARC. AD needs pilots to fill staffs. So as long as people punch out of AD and go to the ARC as at least a TR, the total force stays okay experience-wise for flying ops. Where it gets hurt is losing good pilots on AD staff to guide the AF, in planning/requirements/acquisitions/policy/etc.

But it all comes back to the budget being a zero sum game. Roughly 12k pilots on AD, $100k pro pay for everyone comes out to $1.2B/year. Rough wag if you only give pro pay to pilots who complete their initial ADSC is $600M/year. Assuming it is worth it, what gets cut to pay that bill?

[SocialD]

Well this may be a step in the right direction for retention.  So long Bagram, and good riddance!

Edited July 2, 2021 by SocialD

[Guardian]

For a year or two anyways

[Majestik Møøse]

2 hours ago, jazzdude said:

But it all comes back to the budget being a zero sum game. Roughly 12k pilots on AD, $100k pro pay for everyone comes out to $1.2B/year. Rough wag if you only give pro pay to pilots who complete their initial ADSC is $600M/year. Assuming it is worth it, what gets cut to pay that bill?

The amount of students we’re sending through UPT and all of the B-courses? That’s the whole point - it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to retain your $6.9M pilot than it is to perpetually train new ones. AETC’s budget is $10B/year, so I’m sure it could come from that. Then factor in AETC taking less pilots out of their MWS. It’s an orders of magnitude efficiency improvement.

But! I have a theory that the Air Force and airlines are secretly ok with military pilots leaving, as the government is basically subsidizing airlines with 2k hour pilots. Airlines have never been financially solvent without some sort of government help, and one way to do that is to keep them accident-free for 20 years with the help of experienced military pilots. There are other factors of course, but airline profits are slim, and they could neither afford to build 2k hour jet pilot experience from scratch nor suffer multiple widebody crashes per year like the 1980s.

[jazzdude]

The amount of students we’re sending through UPT and all of the B-courses? That’s the whole point - it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to retain your $6.9M pilot than it is to perpetually train new ones. AETC’s budget is $10B/year, so I’m sure it could come from that. Then factor in AETC taking less pilots out of their MWS. It’s an orders of magnitude efficiency improvement.
But! I have a theory that the Air Force and airlines are secretly ok with military pilots leaving, as the government is basically subsidizing airlines with 2k hour pilots. Airlines have never been financially solvent without some sort of government help, and one way to do that is to keep them accident-free for 20 years with the help of experienced military pilots. There are other factors of course, but airline profits are slim, and they could neither afford to build 2k hour jet pilot experience from scratch nor suffer multiple widebody crashes per year like the 1980s.

Would you sign on to fly for another 10 years? What about if the bonus was $1M in exchange for that 10 year commitment? Could the AF convince enough pilots to take that bonus to actually ramp down UPT/FTU production? It's not just training costs, but predictability in manning, which the AF gets through the initial ADSC as well as a 5+ year bonus ADSC.

Part of the problem is DOPMA, and ceilings for the number of FGOs, and it would take a huge cultural shift to having line captains that stay on for a career (where pro pay or better bonuses would have a greater effect, since the promotion carrot goes away). But that requires a change in the up or out mentality (which Congress gave us the option to do, along with the 5 year promotion windows and merit based promotions).

The airlines have the pressure of seniority to keep pilots from jumping ship elsewhere, and those golden handcuffs get tighter the longer a pilot stays with the company. Sure, airline pilots can quit if they don't like it there, but it means starting over at the bottom at another company's seniority list in a volatile industry that is no stranger to furloughs or companies going bankrupt/out of business, or moving to a different industry.

I think you're theory is right, but it's not a secret. The AF is fine with airlines poaching pilots, as long as a good portion of those pilots also participate in the ARC. The airlines are fine with absenteeism due to guard/reserve commitments because it locks those pilots in (if you drop 5 years straight off mil leave, you probably won't leave the company because of your accrued seniority). And the individual pilot plays airline commitments against mil commitments to improve QoL/schedules. So everyone wins, especially that individual reservist pilot.

[Sprkt69]

22 hours ago, jazzdude said:

The retention of flying experience is in the ARC. AD needs pilots to fill staffs. So as long as people punch out of AD and go to the ARC as at least a TR, the total force stays okay experience-wise for flying ops. Where it gets hurt is losing good pilots on AD staff to guide the AF, in planning/requirements/acquisitions/policy/etc.

 

The lack of experience in the CAF is also getting people killed, losing pilot and machine in the process.

[hindsight2020]

On 7/3/2021 at 8:42 AM, Sprkt69 said:

The lack of experience in the CAF is also getting people killed, losing pilot and machine in the process.

 

The AF higher echelon so far seems fairly comfortable/copacetic about that trade. Down here in the worker's floor we just get to bury our former students, sports kvetch at MDS conferences about manning policies we can't change, and plan missing man flyovers ad nauseam. 

Not trying to be gratuitously despondent, but from where I sit, a lot more visible (from the public's perspective) losses would have to happen to create political pressure onto the Service Chief on this front. 

 

 

[jazzdude]

 
The AF higher echelon so far seems fairly comfortable/copacetic about that trade. Down here in the worker's floor we just get to bury our former students, sports kvetch at MDS conferences about manning policies we can't change, and plan missing man flyovers ad nauseam. 
Not trying to be gratuitously despondent, but from where I sit, a lot more visible (from the public's perspective) losses would have to happen to create political pressure onto the Service Chief on this front. 

Looking at just fatalities, it's likely low enough that it's acceptable to leadership. So you're right, it'll unfortunately take a lot more deaths to cause a change.

However, anecdotally, there seems to be a lot more near misses. And the near misses don't get logged on a slide or metric, and "hides" the safety issues on the line. Sure, there's the ASAP program, but that requires people to fill out paperwork after a long day with competing priorities.

I don't think the solution is paying pilots 100k extra a year to compete with the legacy airlines. It's more fixing the culture/environment where people enjoy their work and it doesn't become a grind, and the only way to do that is to decrease ops while we rebuild. That's not to say no bonus is needed, but money isn't the only issue that needs fixing to improve pilot retention.

If there's a legacy that our time in Afghanistan (and the primacy that CENTCOM enjoyed for the past 2+ decades) has on the AF, it's that we've burned out our crews and airframes for little to no strategic gain.

[hindsight2020]

1 hour ago, jazzdude said:

 

Looking at just fatalities, it's likely low enough that it's acceptable to leadership. So you're right, it'll unfortunately take a lot more deaths to cause a change.

However, anecdotally, there seems to be a lot more near misses. And the near misses don't get logged on a slide or metric, and "hides" the safety issues on the line. Sure, there's the ASAP program, but that requires people to fill out paperwork after a long day with competing priorities.

I don't think the solution is paying pilots 100k extra a year to compete with the legacy airlines. It's more fixing the culture/environment where people enjoy their work and it doesn't become a grind, and the only way to do that is to decrease ops while we rebuild. That's not to say no bonus is needed, but money isn't the only issue that needs fixing to improve pilot retention.

If there's a legacy that our time in Afghanistan (and the primacy that CENTCOM enjoyed for the past 2+ decades) has on the AF, it's that we've burned out our crews and airframes for little to no strategic gain.

 

Oh you're preaching to the choir. But it's moot. Pilot retention is NOT something the AF legitimately cares about. The Service Chief has bought lock stock and barrel this PTN illuminati version of fixing the manning problem via production. Which is itself peddled in a version that purports attaining said goals without the need to re-up a former UPT location (Moody being the obvious one in present circumstances).

For the record, that pseudo-intellectual pet project is not attaining the production targets they have been aiming for since FY18. My prediction is that it will continue to fail to meet targets until the current autocrat in the training throne retires and the next chucklehead tells everybody to start ramping up some other pet project.

Now, even under the Chief's own implicit stipulation of focusing on  production over retention, chances of actually enacting Occam's Razor (e.g ramp up Moody) and getting on with the task at hand? Zero. Our capitalization priorities are FUBAR as it is; zero chance that ever becoming a COA that won't get wholly dismissed from the jump. So PTN gaslighting, and more hull losses is what you'll get.

--brk brk--

On the QOL front, the reality is that a lot of the thrash that made ops tempo what it was, is AFCENT/CENTCOM created, and none of the AF sub-hierarchies dared push back for effect. AETC tours were supposed to be a reprieve, but they got co-opted into that individual augmentee, operation deny xmas nonsense peddled by CENTCOM, and cheered on by the cOmBaT-cRed/deployment-bros that found themselves in the seats in NAF/staff circles. Meanwhile, that one "deployed" base in Qatar looked like mornings at the local Home Depot parking lot. Fwa run amok. But keeping people in garrison for a tour, or honoring BoP follow-on is all of a sudden blasphemy? Copy. 

 

No amount of money is gonna fix that. That's why I went AFRC from day one. I got 99 problems here, but being told I'm "a drain" on the Total Force because I choose to stipulate non-financials (schedules and homesteading in my case) over money or promotions when offering my indentured servitude (aka control), is just not one of them. For the RegAF otoh, squeezing gratuitously appears to be a given, and no amount of money is gonna fix that anti-labor pathology. You need a doctrinal shift, and that's a wish in one hand type o' thing from where I sit.

 

So yeah... the airlines are hiring. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Guardian]

At what point of war or losing our standing in the world do our airlines take a hit or go away making the jobs go away as well. I realize I sound all Red Dawn but with the level of Marxism being pushed making its way to socialism, it doesn’t seem like it’s that far off. We are complaining about the flight pay (me too) but how long will it be around? How long will good paying airline jobs be around or even earned military pensions?

[StoleIt]

9 hours ago, Guardian said:

At what point of war or losing our standing in the world do our airlines take a hit or go away making the jobs go away as well. I realize I sound all Red Dawn but with the level of Marxism being pushed making its way to socialism, it doesn’t seem like it’s that far off. We are complaining about the flight pay (me too) but how long will it be around? How long will good paying airline jobs be around or even earned military pensions?

If it makes you feel better, even the national run airlines pay their pilots pretty well, and I don't see American airlines absolutely disappearing in your scenario. Nearly every country has some sort of domestic/national airline.

[pawnman]

13 hours ago, Guardian said:

At what point of war or losing our standing in the world do our airlines take a hit or go away making the jobs go away as well. I realize I sound all Red Dawn but with the level of Marxism being pushed making its way to socialism, it doesn’t seem like it’s that far off. We are complaining about the flight pay (me too) but how long will it be around? How long will good paying airline jobs be around or even earned military pensions?

It'll be around until everyone typing away on this message board is dead.

[SurelySerious]

Kind of related look at the USMC high turnover personnel strategy in their enlisted ranks.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-courage-to-change-modernizing-u-s-marine-corps-human-capital-investment-and-retention/

To have the force the Marine Corps wants, it must increase investment in — and retention of — enlisted human capital in keeping with its appetite for increased capability.

By any standard, the Marine Corps system has managed to meet the internal, selfreferential measures of success as defined within its manpower management orders and directives. The professionalism, sacrifice, and hard work of recruiters and manpower professionals have met demands of the high-turnover, low-investment system. Time and again, young Marines have prevailed on modern battlefields. They have succeeded in spite of — not because of — the system in which they operate. This paper steps outside of the presuppositions of the “logical pyramid” paradigm and considers afresh whether Marine Corps enlisted human capital practices deliver the greatest possible Fleet Marine Force (FMF)capability for a given personnel budget.

[WheelsOff]

On 7/5/2021 at 6:04 PM, hindsight2020 said:

until the current autocrat in the training throne retires

Ugh. Is that guy ever gonna leave?!

Edited July 20, 2021 by WheelsOff

[Ryder1587]

Did the take rates for this year get published yet ?  Or are they too embarrassed to release them?

[Hunter Rose]

13 hours ago, Ryder1587 said:

Did the take rates for this year get published yet ?  Or are they too embarrassed to release them?

The current take rates are out there. I think it's on that aircrew task force website.  It's a not well advertised link that you have to hunt for.  I looked at them two weeks ago, and they are abysmal, as should be expected with such a shitty bonus. Overall rate was like 36% or so. Fighter/bombers were even lower. A couple months left for folks to sign it so the numbers may increase, but it looked like it was shaping up to be the worst take rates in the last 5+ years.

I'll track it down today at work.

[Muscle2002]

On 7/21/2021 at 8:58 AM, Hunter Rose said:

The current take rates are out there. I think it's on that aircrew task force website.  It's a not well advertised link that you have to hunt for.  I looked at them two weeks ago, and they are abysmal, as should be expected with such a shitty bonus. Overall rate was like 36% or so. Fighter/bombers were even lower. A couple months left for folks to sign it so the numbers may increase, but it looked like it was shaping up to be the worst take rates in the last 5+ years.

I'll track it down today at work.

Why worry about retention when PA can just write a chintzy article about retention and how the Total Force hopes it can preserve talent that “The nation has invested millions of dollars in training these great Americans to protect and defend our way of life."

Pilots Leaving Active Duty Have Safe Landing Place in Reserve/Guard

[skosh]

https://starsdemog.a1vdc.us.af.mil/Avb/avb.html

Here's the AvB 2021 stat tracker site.  (Recommend viewing in Chrome)  Lots of interesting info there, and you can also go back and look at historical data.  There's also a filter section and spreadsheet at the bottom where you can find your MAJCOM/MDS/Base of interest and see what individual people are doing. 

Numbers are abysmal (not surprising given the changes this year), with just over a month left in the window.  Fixed wing pilot take rate is still sitting below 30%.

Full disclosure: I'm likely signing the 8 year bonus, as I was planning on staying in until retirement anyway and I still love my job (most days).  The pros outweigh the cons for my family and my situation.  But this bonus would NOT have been anywhere near competitive enough to convince me if I was on the fence.

Anyone know if the recently marked NDAA from the SASC made any changes to the bonus?

[di1630]

As of 9 Aug

Fighters 24%
Bombers 26%
Fatties 27%
Spec ops 47%
Rescue 51%

Manned overall 32%

[Day Man]

i would enjoy some serious schadenfreude at the AF's expense, but the national security implications are worrying.

[Hunter Rose]

12 hours ago, Day Man said:

i would enjoy some serious schadenfreude at the AF's expense, but the national security implications are worrying.

 I'll enjoy the schadenfreude. I'd feel a little sympathy if the AF had left the bonus at pre-COVID terms.  But they didn't. They took the risk that COVID would affect the airlines longer, and offered a bonus with shit terms with less money/longer minimum commitments. They gambled and lost. So to hell with a big AF that makes it pretty clear they do not appreciate their rated force.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Hunter Rose

[di1630]

Anyone here in the TR bonus? What are terms?