Originally Posted by Otterbox

Then why did you chose to be a pilot instead of a SWO or NFO? I’m sure there are 100s of folks who wanted to be a pilot more than you... why’d you take a slot away from them? The Half measured enthusiasm argument isn’t making much sense and doesn’t match up with your stated end goal.

I always used to tell folks to never make selection choices based on perceived airline hiring potentional. A lot of my instructors in Primary and DHs went VP/VQ back in the day with those ambitions and ended up spending the lost decade trapped in communities in the Navy they resented and had no way out of since the airlines weren’t really hiring much from 9/11 to 2014ish.

The #1 way to go directly from a flying tour in the Navy to a major airline is flying tacair. Due to the length of the pipeline you either won’t have a traditional disassociated sea tour where you won’t fly (think CAG staff) or you’ll be able to leave directly from a shore tour.

Every other community is going to expect a 12-24 month non flying tour prior to your MSR which will force you to go regionals for 6-36 months (I’ve seen the full range for folks who leave military aviation non flight current... the lower hours the longer the time at the regionals).

The other downside of VP/VQ/helo is the Detailer are only mandated to give you three flying tours- JO, DH and CO tour. Only one of those tours happen before your MSR. With NAE stepping up to take 68% of all generic line officer staffing billets to make up for surface and subsurface community retention problems and the UAS expansion into NAE you’re starting to see more instances where folks are only getting one flying tour before they get out. Those folks are definitely regional bound for a long haul unless they can snag big wing flying in a reserve/Guard unit.

The absolute worst part about squadron life is all the made up busy work that you do in a home cycle to legitimize things like the readiness matrix, Battle E submissions, Front office fitreps and O-4 fitreps. TONS of long hours, short notice dets and very little sense of reward since you’re not on deployment. You work hardest when you’re on home cycle and your family never understands why you’re working so hard because you’re not on deployment and are “home” so therefore should be home with them much more. VQ(T) doesn’t deploy in the traditional sense so there’s very little reward for the effort and quality of life seems to suffer as the community leaderships drive their squadrons into the ground trying to display relivancy. I’ve never met a anyone who was not community golden child who had a positive experience with the community. The way you’re focused so much on the airlines, it will be highly unlikely that you’ll end up as a community golden child...

For quality of hours (100% PIC time vs 25-35% PIC time) SEA/SHORE flying billet opportunity and ability to transition from the Navy flight current directly to the majors your selection card should look:

J1/J2
E-2 (if it’s back to being its own pipeline selection again)
VP

It used to be you only got to put your top 3 choices down on your selection card and the old civilian guy at CNATRA did his best to get you one of those three choices. Don’t put something on there you wouldn’t be okay with.

Having had the opportunity to interact with many folks from multiple communities, I’d say helo pilots are generally happier in their community than VQ(T) pilots, P-3/EP-3 pilots and E-2 pilots, but not P-8 pilots, jet pilots and C-2 pilots (in that order).

Good luck.