Originally Posted by
BlackOcelot
Your experience must have been much different than mine. Every deployment was more frustrating and painful than the one before it.
How can being an airline pilot that gets paid an insane amount of money to work half of the month that stays in nice hotels even compare to deploying to a combat zone on the other side of world to sleep in a tent and eat MREs?
Hey I'm not saying deployments weren't painful or progressively more painful than the previous one. But sit back and consider this reality : as a professional pilot, you will be gone from your own life for roughly half of the month, give or take a day or two, for quite a bit of time..... for possibly 40 years if you were lucky enough to get in at 24 for instance. We had our deployable billets and non deployable billets and yes the 6 or 9 or 12 or 15 or gawd forbid longer stretches, and holy mackerel the guys in the tents with the MREs... yeah i salute you
but hey, let's help the guy understand he's gotten his, and the rushing to the first class and flushing yet another time with the family may be just another nail in the coffin for a marriage or time with the kids in their last few years around the house.