General Discharge Under Honorable Conditions
 

Hello APC:

I am trying to get a gauge on if my General Discharge Under Honorable Conditions will be a hard stop barrier to getting hired on with the Regionals. Long story short is I have a General Discharge Under Honorable Conditions from the Army National Guard and I know generally those must be explained in the interview and it's normally no issue, but mine is complicated.

I was discharged from the Army Guard as an O-1 with a General Discharge Under Honorable Conditions. I successfully completed the Army's flight school to be a Blackhawk Pilot with the Army Guard. However, due to COVID, my SERE (Survival School) was pushed towards the end of the training cycle. I was aware of this and was even excited for SERE, but I had a lot of personal stressors going on at the time that didn't manifest themselves until I started the SERE training cycle. My wife was due in 2 months with our 2nd son (we also had a 10 month-old at the time), I was in the process of finding a job and actively interviewing (I was National Guard so I needed to find employment after flight school), and I was also in the process of finding a new place to live for my family because we weren't returning to the same state from before I started training. I did not have a job lined up for my family yet and I had to go to SERE school. I started the training cycle, but after starting training the uncertainty of my family situation hit me and I I self-dropped from the course (finding a new job/home before having another baby...) and I requested that I come back to finish SERE once I got my family situation under control. However, the Army did not agree with that plan and I was told I had to go to SERE right away or likely not be given another opportunity. I chose to self-drop from the course and take care of my family situation.

My learnings and ownership from this is that I was overextended and I didn't respect how difficult SERE school would be with those stressors going on. During the flight training portion (which I successfully completed. No check-ride failures) I had my first son, did a "live-in flip" on my house, started taking graduate school classes online, was actively interviewing for jobs towards the end, self-managing a rental property, and my wife became pregnant again 4 months after having our first-born while in flight training. I am a type-A (like most pilots) and I tried to do too many things at once and it caught up to me. I was able to successfully complete flight training with all of this going on, but everything caught up to me when I had to go to SERE (no job yet, no house, and another kid on the way...). For further context, SERE school is a blackout communication school with no exceptions. I was actively interviewing for jobs up until the day I left and I had nothing lined-up yet. Additionally, SERE school is supposed to be on the front end of the training cycle and people are given 2-3 attempts at the course due to its difficulty but because of COVID, my SERE school date was pushed towards the end of flight school. If I was able to go to SERE during the normal timeframe, I would not have been worrying about employment/house for my family.

I apologize for the long story, but I'm just playing out how I am going to explain my discharge in an interview and if this would be a hard-stop for the regionals. I would like to be an airline pilot, but it would also be a gut punch if I get the rest of my ratings and I can't get hired because of this. I am looking for honest feedback on how you or the hiring board for a regional would respond to this story...


I appreciate everyone's feedback and advice. Thank you
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If you can find a regional with enough CAs to actually be running classes I would be surprised if they cared. Not many of their current pilots did SERE training either. Competition among the regionals never got THAT severe.

That sounds to me like a perfectly reasonable explanation for a GUH, better than the usual explanations (adultery, etc).

I'm sure regionals will have no issues, they are looking for excuses to hire pilots, not excuses to not hire them.

Your lesson learned was about clearing your schedule and personal life before training events, you have more control of that in the airlines.

I doubt you will have an issue at a regional. They might even give you preference knowing you will have possible issues leaving for a major. Major airlines may have questions. It’s odd to get tossed on a general discharge for something like that. It will strike an interviewer as strange they gave up on you after putting you through flight school over this issue. When they offered you the chance to go back you flat refused? I would shorten your story down to about 2 sentences. What you wrote sounds like basic life for a young couple. SERE school is 3 weeks long. How would you have handled a 6 month deployment? How will you handle 6 weeks away for training and gone half each month?

I told them I would comeback and do the training after I got income secured for my family (others who got backlogged with COVID were given a waiver to comeback at CCC to do SERE). They didn't oblige to that and said I had to go again 7 days after I had just dropped. I decided to take care of my family's financial stability instead. The lack of income was the biggest stressor. I had handled being gone for longer periods of training before, but the lack of income and interview momentum I had going was more of a stressor than I had thought before entering the training cycle.

Thanks for all of the feedback.

What was the discharge code(s)?

Training drop/suitability is one thing. If it was AWOL, that might be something else.

No re-enlistment eligibility code was given since I was an officer, but I have to wait 24 months to reenlist with a GUH. I was under the impression I was just going to be kicked back enlisted and actually have to serve 4 years of time because of the circumstances, but I was discharged. I didn't want to leave the Army like this and feel like I owe time so I actually recently tried to reenlist, but I was told I have to wait 24 months apparently.

It’s clear you feel guilty about this, and while I personally think that says good things about you, to the 94% of US citizens WHO HAVE NEVER SERVED it’s not going to make a rat’s @$$ worth of difference. Do what you feel like you should do with reenlisting or Reserve time to make you feel good about yourself but I doubt the HR driven hiring folks will know or care about the difference between honorable discharge and general under honorable conditions.

You’ll be fine… just be ready to give a quick and honest response if asked…

There really should be a separation code, for O or E. There may or may not be a re-entry code (that might trigger the 24 month wait).