Right now IMO, No. Five years would put you on the back side of the retirement wave, although with retirements still humming along by historical standards.

Assumes that you finish up in the reserves, so you would still have Tricare, except for the "Grey Area" between reserve retirement and age 60. If you want low-impact, some non-flying reserve jobs are pretty close to one weekend/month, two weeks/year.

But it's risk vs. reward. The totally risk-averse option would be to stay in. Only you know where you fall on the spectrum. Make sure the spouse is educated on this stuff. I've known guys who missed out on a lot because wifey wanted too stay in, solely because she was comfortable in the mil ecosystem and didn't know anything about the real world.

We're in uncharted economic territory, who knows? It's inherently cyclical but the timing is now obviously operating with new variables, so the magnitude is also probably equally unpredictable. Black Swan events are always possible.

A downturn is inevitable... eventually. For all we know that could be in 30 years

But assuming a moderate downturn in the near future, it's likely IMO the big airlines will not furlough due to pending retirements. For airlines with multiple fleet types a single furlough can generate 5-7 training events, which cost money and take all of those pilots off line for months. Combine that with retirement movement off top of the list and the big three would probably need to recall the furloughs before they even finished moving all the pilots around to adjust for the furlough in the first place!

An airline with a single fleet type (ex SWA) would be able to furlough (and recall) more readily since there would not be cascading training events across multiple fleets.


Yes reserves for sure if you get out.