Originally Posted by
DirectHISER
With the major reduction in flying and hiring at both the regionals and majors, I have been considering ANG as an option to build time/experience while the industry recovers. Ideally, I would come in AD and try to fly as much as possible. I am currently 1 year away from having a bachelors degree and I have my commercial AMEL with instrument rating. I also plan on getting CFI CFII MEI during my remaining time at school. Any thoughts/advice on taking this route? Am I thinking too far down the road? Thanks in advance!
The two posters above have great advice. ANG can be a longer route and you might have longer breaks between training segments, which can be tough if you’re trying to maintain employment or housing, but you might have a better chance with full time active duty orders over Reserves. Reserves are more Active Duty-lite, the training is run one piece after the other until you’re through seasoning (so it’s likely a quicker path), and there is one bigger kicker: they have what’s called TDART, which is an up to 4-year, guaranteed civil service job to fly with your unit after UPT. It’s NOT Active Duty and is an 8-5 type job that doesn’t count as military service (mainly for USERRA protections), but you will get paid to fly with your unit and build hours in addition to your Reserves requirements.
As they stated above, it'll take a few years to go from now to getting done with the other end, so get started sooner rather than later. It’s probably not worth getting any more licenses, unless you just wanna keep flying.
Oh, last piece: sounds like they are starting to offer T1-only track to those that have licenses and know they want to fly heavies.