ZapBrannigan

I don't claim to understand military time building at all but 2000 hours seems extremely low time. Congratulations and good luck nonetheless!

CODs4ever

Zap - that is pretty typical to see these days, especially for Navy guys who might only fly 100 hrs/year at best. When I was on active duty 10+ years ago, my best year ever was around 500 hours but your typical Navy fighter guy might only fly 10-15 per month. The best place for mil guys to build hours is in the training command where you can sometimes get 700-800/year.

Tnkr

Zap, on top of what COD said, most of my tanker bros deployed constantly for their first 4-6 yrs, accumulating ~2000-3000 hrs. After that they tend to end up in non-flying staff tours so their hrs stagnate. Most left seat upgrades when I was at the schoolhouse were around 1800-2200 hrs. I've seen as low as ~1300 hrs. 'Experienced' IPs are around 3000 hrs. Other airframes may vary a bit. Hope that makes more sense.


Without a heart it's just a job.

ZapBrannigan

Yup makes perfect sense. Just a different world from civilian regional guys flying 1000 a year or corporate 91/135 guys flying 400-700 hours per year and ending up here with 7000-10,000 TT. Thank you for explaining.

fishforfun

I'm guessing the 2000ish TT guys are fighter types. There are a few exceptions to that but it's rare for a military heavy driver to get hired with that low. And Rocky clearly stated at WAI they are looking for quality not quantity of hours.

FLY6584

I was a heavy guy with 2300 TT that got hired this past summer, but I got out of the AF five years before my commitment was up and the majority of my time was TPIC. I would have to agree that I think they prefer quality over quantity.

fishforfun

Please don't misinterpret quality as mil vs civilian. Quality seems to mean TPIC, part 91/135, fighter types, multiple type ratings, etc. At least that's how it was explained to me at WAI.

b190av8r

I recall being told the same thing at WAI. A lot of us have that stuff but we continue to wait patiently.

Congrats to those who have gotten interview invites recently. Good luck!

Otterbox

Aka they don't really care about piston hours. Turbine time is what they view as "quality".

Snaplock

I'm a current fighter guy in the AF, so I thought I would explain how the hours end up being so low for us.

First, fighter aviation is a completely different world from civilian flying as you can imagine. Airline pilots and often heavy mil types fly from A to B and call it a day. In the fighter world it doesn't work like that.

I typically fly 3-5 times per week, and I am consistently in the top three in my squadron each month for hours and sorties. When I fly I start getting ready for my sortie 4-5 hours prior to takeoff. Then I will rally with my formation 3-4 hours prior to takeoff and mission plan or discuss the basics of what we are going to go do for that day. Then I will brief my formation 2.5 hours prior to takeoff for about 60-70 minutes on what we will execute during the sortie. We then step an hour prior to takeoff and then fly on average about a 1.3-1.5 hour sortie. After landing I meet back up with my formation about an hour to hour and a half after landing and then we debrief for 1.5-3 hours. I've had debriefs go up to 6 hours, and that is not unheard of.

At the end of the day when I'm all done with flying, and debriefing, and writing grade sheets I've already worked 10-12 hours. If my duty day allows I will then need to stick around a couple more hours to take care of other ground duties so I don't get into trouble with my boss. To him as long as I didn't break a jet or get myself or my students in trouble then I did a good job flying. What ends up really being noticeable is if my additional ground duties are taken care of. This is completely backwards of how things should be. That's a conversation for another day though.

So, in the end the types of sorties that fighters fly are very complex and even though they are short they take up pretty much the whole day. I've been in the Air Force 10 years and I'm at 2,200 hours. I've been lucky and have been in a cockpit the whole time. A lot aren't that lucky. Dudes that we are retiring after a full 20 year career in my fighter have 3,000-3,500 hours. Right now I feel good if I get to log 150 hours a year. When we deploy and go into combat we fly a lot more but it really ends up only being a little boost to the hours game.

Anyway, I don't know if that helps people to understand how fighter dudes end up having such low hours, but I gave it a shot. I'm also not trying to imply that fighter pilots are better pilots. We just do a different type of flying. In fact if you were to start quizzing a lot of us on tricky instrument procedures and FAR/AIM type of stuff you'd probably be shocked at the lack of knowledge since our focus is on tactics.

-SnapLock