Originally Posted by
C130driver
My solution for this pilot crisis? Increase utilization of the guard/reserves. Boost up AGR slots, etc. As rapidly as I want to bail active duty myself along with many of my peers will happily continue serving in the guard/reserves while starting our careers at airlines....2 cents
Sounds good in theory... We already have dudes bailing to UAVs, non-flying gigs, or just getting out. Dwell time has decreased and TDYs have increased. Ops tempo has increased dramatically since I entered the Guard over 15 years ago. Now they've decided to start "deploying" some of us to NON-contingecy operations (read: NOT USERRA exempt). Add in an alert mission and it creates a very busy squadron...even for the part timers. If they raise our ops tempo much more, it will only make the manning situation worse, not better.
Adding AGR spots, may not do much either. Some squadron can't fill the full time jobs they have, and it's not just as easy as hiring dudes of AD...unless you want to boot all your part-timers.