Originally Posted by FLY6584

Well its a Referral OPR due to receiving an LOR with a UIF for texting in the cockpit. I was instructing a student on his last ride before sending him to his checkride. While we were at an outbase practicing emergency landing patterns the student could not get one of them on the ground so I knew I was going to hook him and not send him to his checkride the next day. It was the last go of the day, at the very end of the day, and my scheduler was back in the flightroom building the schedule for the next day and coordinating to have a Check IP fly with this student on his checkride. By the time I made it back to the flight room it would have been another hour and a half and everyone would have gone home for the day and the scheduler would have had to change everything last minute. Having been a scheduler in the past I know what it feels like to have a bomb dropped in your schedule last minute thus keeping you there that much later when you already are the last one in the flight walking out the door every night.

So needless to say I texted him while climbing out on a simple VFR departure on a clear and a million day. A quick text that basically said... "Lt XXXX is hooking this ride, plan accordingly." Was it wrong and was I in direct violation of an AFI? Absolutely. Do I regret doing it and wish I could take it back. No doubt. Is the LOR and subsequent referral OPR warranted? I don't know and that wasn't for me to decide. In today's climate of people doing flyby's 18ft above the Scoreboard, barrel rolling King Air's, and anything else that is driving this focus on Flight Discipline I can understand why leadership would like to make a statement.

Does it stink that it has probably ended my Air Force career? Sure, but I never saw myself making a career out of the Air Force anyways and I was grateful that a flight related disciplinary action was not taken and it was left to an LOR with a UIF. Now I just learned that it will be driving a referral OPR so I was curious how much of an affect this will have in the airlines...

Cheers fellas