Recently a current fighter pilot on leave came through the local flight school to get a rental checkout. He wanted to take some friends up. Of course he needed some brush up on flying a new airplane, especially one so different from a fighter, but apparently his lack of knowledge on "simple" things was rather surprising.

In particular, he had trouble dealing with local ATC and also was entering the towered airspace without radio contact once he was out on his own. There were some other basic things the local instructors were surprised at too, but I can't remember.

Doing a little hangar flying with some pilots it was brought up that military pilots have certain things done for them, for example extra help from ATC to make their mission simpler. The idea sounded a lot like they fly under ATC's watchful and helpful eye most of the time. BUT-I know there are VFR training routes on sectionals, so I would assume they are knowledgable enough to do some of these things on their own and understand how to operate in the National Airspace System.

My question is simply this, do military pilots have some difficulty when flying on the civilian side? This gentleman spark my curiousity.


Regards (and respect to all- not meant to be inflammatory towards military pilots).

Also, I left the details a little vague intentionally so as not to tip my hand about this person's identity in case he or his friends visit this board.