Originally Posted by
L'il J.Seinfeld
Are you serious? IMO taking mil leave is not "screwing the other pilots". The airline is not the military and your bros at the airline are taking care of themselves first, as they should. The airline is the one screwing people. Why should you blow through life savings to subsidize the ridiculous first year pay?
I made around 80k on active duty when I left the mil as a senior O-3. The 26,000 UPS paid was not enough to keep me in my modest house, without cashing out my IRAs and kids college funds. I chose mil leave and dropped about 40% of my line in order to "trough" with the Reserves. Our Union encourages guys to take as much mil leave as they can get while on probation. It is a legally protected right and one that you should not be ashamed to take.
How is it screwing over fellow pilots anyway? Do some airlines force their pilots to work extra? I say that the respective unions need to take care of it in the contract if guys are being forced to work extra. It's not that way at UPS--although guys on reserve will have a higher chance of being called out if others are on mil leave.
I'll get off the soapbox. But it surprises me that someone would think it's screwing over your peers to take mil leave.
I just don't know how someone could in good faith apply for a job and accept it knowing that as soon as you get it you are going to go volunteer to go back onto active duty to make up for lost wages. I can completely understand if you involuntarily got recalled back to active duty and you didn't have a choice in the matter. This seems like a common thing for guys to do in the airline industry. I just wonder how common of a practice it is in the rest of the business world.