JohnBurke

Speak for yourself, not for me.

You don't have a business. What you would do is really irrelevant. What you would do would need to be tempered by what actually happens to you and your business. Perhaps if you saw eight or ten pilots show up, take your 20-40,000 dollar training and never show up for work, you might change your tune. Especially given that the cost of replacing a pilot is more than just the training dollars.

Everybody earns their keep. Military aviators sometimes feel like they've paid their dues, and are therefore somehow different, almost as if they've earned it more than others; it's arrogant. Everybody else earned it, just didn't get paid as much to do it, or get the perks. Or get someone else to pay for it.

The employers I mentioned, the ones who were veterans themselves, elected not to hire any more veterans precisely because they had most of their problems from military flyers. Not my decision. Not my observation. Not my policy. Theirs. I work for one gentleman who has multiple Purple Hearts, a large flag in his hangar as well as service flags and who is as proud as any of the service he gave. His personal experience with military aviators is what has lead him to hire no more. He's fed up. If I'd had the losses he's had due to the same thing, I'd probably feel the same way. Another career military pilot I flew for...he flat-out refused to hire another military aviator, after the eighth one in a row failed to return from FSI. He bought them each a type rating, they all knew that he asked for a year in return, and they all knew the wage. They took jobs out the door; jobs that required them to hold a type, so they got this owner to buy the type then jumped ship and went elsewhere. It is what it is, but that level of dishonor is what leads to training contracts and in leaner times, pay to play.

I've spent my fair share of time in combat zones as well as third world countries as well as demanding, high intensity flight environments. It means nothing. It's irrelevant, really, especially to this thread.

If a pilot makes a commitment, I don't care where he came from or what his background it or how special he thinks he is, or how much that shiny jet syndrome is gnawing at his gut trying to pry him away. It's not really that complicated: honor the damn commitment. Where integrity has fallen to a rubble of dishonesty, training contracts and the like grow in it's wake. If one has hitched one's wagon to such a contract, or made a commitment, the wrong question is how to get out of it.

If you can't do the time, don't sign the line, as a bad poet might say.