Originally Posted by
cheap
USERRA (the law that protects civilian jobs and seniority for military service) only protects you for five years. Your airline may be more generous than USERRA but they are not required to be.
This is not correct.
There is a five year limit for VOLUNTARY military duty, which as defined per law has numerous exemptions. I won't list all of them but for someone who joins the active duty military these are duty periods which would be totally exempt from the five year counter:
- Basic Training/OTS/OCS
- Initial MOS Training (ie flight school and all follow-ons)
- Any military obligation incurred due to training/education. This means the ENTIRE obligated service period after wings.
So what this means is that the OP could go on AD, do flight training then do his 8+ year obligation and return to SKW having burned ZERO time on his five year counter. He could then freely use that five years in the guard/reserves as desired.
Reality, you could go on AD and with creative timing for specialty schools and masters degree, do a full 20 years, retire, and then return to an airline job... with accrued seniority.