Originally Posted by
UAL T38 Phlyer
Best piece of advice I've seen on the thread.
FWIW: I flew for both; a two-year exchange with the Navy. Of my Air Force buds, roughly 1/3 stayed and made it a career; if you include the ones who went Guard or Reserve, 66%.
But I only know one guy who stayed in the Navy, active, until retirement.
And I know one guy that stayed in the Naval Reserve until retirement, and it was non-flying, for points-only. He did that because he was furloughed. When the Navy guys hit their O-5 boards, they quit, because either way, they are promoted out of the cockpit.
Both sides tend to be fiercely proud of their branch of service, and rightfully so. But the track record suggests one is more sustainable/livable than the other.
FWIW.
Every reply so far has a grain of truth, some not so much. It really comes down to what you want to do and more importantly, what airplane you want to fly. If you can perform under pressure and max out academically/during check flights. You can choose your destiny in most places (Number 1 almost always gets first choice in selection for platform or location) if you just show up and like to party, you'll get what you get. You probably have or had a poster of a particular plane on your wall that you've been drooling over since you were a toddler. If that's what you want, go do it. If you want to fill a logbook with heavy time to position yourself for an airline career 10 or more years in the future, do that. Yep, you'll get some deployments and spend some time out of the cockpit, but every AD service will have some type of staff job or service school that will put flying on hold. Just realize you can fly pointy grey jets and still do the airline gig down the line. For those poo pooing Navy, I just retired at 22 years. I only did 9 months of that out of the cockpit and did most of 3k hours in Hornets. I just got hired at AA, so you don't have to fly heavies to be able to make the move to airlines. Good luck with your decision..