Originally Posted by Cleared4appch

Ah come on man, we’ve seen this conversation come up before plenty of times on here, and we all know that our biases can easily get injected into it. Civilians aren’t perfect, but neither are military guys either. Military pilots have more than their share of struggles and adjustments when transitioning to airline flying just like civilians. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard airline sim instructors tell me over the last 2 years of how military guys are the ones getting the most retrains/repeat lessons more than anyone else. And no they weren’t military helicopter pilots. Military pilots can and do wash out of training. Does that necessarily ‘mean something?’ No, nor am I tying to imply anything by it. Just means military aren’t perfect.

Granted, the training in the military is very intense and demanding considering the types of operations you do in the military. The training for that kind of stuff isn’t easy nor should it be. Especially things like landing on carriers and formation flying. Takes lots of practice and focus I would imagine to not only perfect those skills but to maintain them as well.

The military wants you to fly the way they want you to fly. It’s understandable. The airlines are the same way. You fly the machine the way they want you to fly it. We don’t do formation flying, land on carriers, perform aerobatics or night NVG stuff at low level, but the training certainly is demanding enough to a degree that military types still can, and do struggle with. Sure you may have flown a high performance, high speed jet in the military, but the way you will fly the jet will be very different at your airline job. The procedures are likely vastly different.

In terms of hours and experience, yea I’ll give it to you that the military pilot has certainly seen and experienced more, especially all in turbine aircraft in 500 hours compared to the average civilian. But give it 5-10 years and that civilian will likely have accumulated far more flight time and experiences, likely in turbojets, than the average military aviator. Military pilots just simply don’t fly as much after flight school. For civilians it’s usually the opposite. They are still flying a ton long after they completed flight training. Their proficiency is sharp.

Yes military vs civilian training and flying are apples to oranges. They are 2 very different animals, that are focused on entirely different things. Civilian training is good for civilian operations. Military training is good for military operations. Can there be a good, positive transfer of learning from one realm to the other? Certainly, but sometimes that’s not the case. Attitude is ultimately the thing makes or breaks people. Go in with the wrong attitude in either realm, military or civilian, or switching from one to the other, and you’re gonna have problems before you know it. Like I said civilians may not do any of the cool xxit that military guys get to do, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t good at what we do.