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Old 10-24-2018, 10:26 AM
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cheap
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Joined APC: Oct 2018
Posts: 47
Default Career Intermission Program

In case you were unaware, like I was a few months ago, there's a career intermission program (CIP) alive and well in the DoD. My experience is with the Air Force, but I believe the Navy has a similar program. The services have been doing a TERRIBLE job advertising this, though, and I only stumbled upon it because I desperately googled "Air Force hiatus."

Big picture: you can take 1 to 3 years off from active duty to do whatever you want. It was originally sold to CCs as a means for women to be pregnant (which is probably why no one knows this exists) but officially it is for members to pursue "personal or professional goals" like starting a family OR hacking a seniority number with your favorite major airline. You keep Tricare, get paid 1/15 of your monthly pay (base pay?) and hold a DD-214 while staying scrolled in the IRR. They pay to move you wherever, and when you come back to AD they pay to move you again. The debt is 2 months active duty for every 1 month on hiatus, so a minimum of an extra 2 year ADSC that runs consecutively (not concurrently) with UPT ADSCs, so it will add time to your service.

HOWEVER! If you are within 3 years of separating or retiring, you can get out now for a year, earn your seniority number before this huge hiring wave peaks, drop USERRA mil leave for up to five years, come back and finish your ADSC commitment, then return to your airline as a 3/4/5/6 year guy with thousands of line numbers behind you, have a super sweet FO schedule or maybe even be able to bid for captain somewhere junior, and have years of b-plan contributions in the bank. The b-fund contributions are like getting your own personal pilot bonus without committing to missing the hiring wave.

Caveats: you can't have an approved retirement or separation in the system to be eligible. I had an approved separation and was worried that if I cancelled it I'd get boned with a CIP denial and then have to restart the 6-month separation notification window, so I called AFPC and asked how likely it was that I'd get approved for my intermission. The major I spoke with told me "100% of officers that have applied in the past three years have been approved." I also discovered that the waiver approval authority for separation requests within six months is the local FSS/CC, another major. I cancelled my separation and applied to CIP instead.

If you want more details, search "CIP" in MyPers. They only hold boards for these 3x/year, and it takes ~7 weeks for results to get published. Approved members can then separate in as little as 12 weeks. For me, I already had my apps published since I was close to my separation date (at 18 years AD) so I just adjusted my availability date about a month sooner, but it'll be an easy guarantee to get the remaining 2 years of AD time I need for the full retirement vs struggling with sanctuary rules or fighting for IMA opportunities.
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