In the tanker community, it was common to see a few guys go to 57 and these guys seemed to be the ones who drank the ART CoolAid, but I can admit there has always been a "pink elephant" about the career of an ART for a pilot. In the wake of an airline industry that is going to see unprecedented attrition, the ART program is going to die a slow death unless they do something to keep pilots from leaving. It has happened before in the late 90's and I believe that is when they restructured the ART pilot pay scale to the GS-13 with 30% bonus by way of "locality pay". In a day when first year airline pay was $30 an hour and it took 5-6 years to break even with ART pay, it was a tough sell for some guys to leave the comforts of full-time ANG employment. These days, with first year pay anywhere from $65-80 an hour at the "Big 3", bailing from the ART world to the airlines becomes a lot more manageable. By year two, it's just about break even and by years three and four, you're ahead. Of course there's also something to be said about only working 75 hours a month for $100k a year at an airline vs. 160+ hours a month for the same pay and a lackluster retirement.

Of course some can argue about the stability of the Technician world and that it's a good job with a family, but I don't know if I totally agree with that. Last year I was gone about 90 days as a full-timer with two deployments, sim training, a few short over-nights, and some formal school. We're busy these days. Between CENTCOM and PACOM rotations, UTA's, sim training, and everything else in between, the old Guard has just about turned into the new Active Duty. Our full-timers do a lot because we don't have many Guard Bums and most of our traditionals are senior enough at their companies that they actually lose money to mil-drop a trip to come in and do a Guard lift or Business Effort, so who do you think does them? The full-timers.

A little over a year ago, we had our Noble Eagle mission taken away from us. One could say this was a "Gravy Train" and they'd probably be right, but it was a very easy mission for the ANG to have and we did it well. Of course the bean counters stepped in and thought the AD could do it cheaper (not better) and there it went, just like that with about 3 weeks warning. That was about $12,000 net for me a year, which leveled the playing ground a bit between the ART vs. AGR wars. A lot of us rolled the dice and pulled alert on weekends/holidays. Sometimes you won and sometimes you didn't, but the money was good regardless and it was Title 10 contingency orders towards your 90 per year deal, but eventually the bean counters smarten up.

For an ART to burn FTP's (Flight Training Periods), we need to either be on some sort of leave status from our ART jobs or stay past the ART duty day and fly at night. If we fly at night, we come in and do a normal ART duty day and then brief/fly between 1700-2200. It's a long day and many of us routinely do this 3-4 times a month. So, in reality I probably put in near 200 hours of work per month for $135,000 a year. That ends up being about $56 an hour. In the ART world, we make good money by putting in long hours. Our AGR's come in around 1400 if they're flying at night and make more money than I do.

One thing we haven't talked about here, but something I've been looking into; can ANG units "stop loss" AGR's?