USN C9B

This question comes up once a year in every squadron. The answer is yes and no.

It depends on the country. The US has a SOFA agreement with each foreign country we regularly visit. Some of them say military personnel must be on active duty others don't. Japan, most of South and Central America, most of the Middle East and Africa require you to be on active duty (ADT, AT etc). Most of western Europe doesn't require active duty. If there is no SOFA, then you must be on activce duty. In order to see it in writing, you must review the SOFA for each country you are planning to RON or overfly (in case of a divert). That takes a lot of time and I guarantee few folks have the time to research it.

From an operational view, the aircraft and crew cannot accept any change in mission. Also, to send you on a 6-8 day trip on IDTT may eat up most of the quarter's budget. That may prevent the ops guys from putting several other aircrew on CONUS RONs using IDTT. In other words, you'd eat up the whole pot and the wealth is not shared.

What I did when I was in a squadron: Europe (UK, Ireland, France, Germany etc) quick turns or to US territories (Guam, PR etc), we did on AFTP/IDTT if funds were available. Anywhere else went on AT or ADT.

C9