Thank you RussR for your quick response. Looking for something stable, less chaotic, and predictable to support and raise my family. I know little to nothing about the GS side of Federal work. I have 21+ years in the Military, active and reserve. I have some serious thinking to do. I think I will apply, see what happens. I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.

You might try reaching out to James at Raven Careers. He’s a career coach and just left Flight Check. Might could get some good insight on one versus the other.

For the majority of our domestic work, it's the latter. "Two weeks in a row" means two separate itineraries. Most of our itineraries are Tuesday to Friday, so 3 nights away from home. If you have two weeks on in a row, you come back Friday afternoon, have the weekend off, then Monday do some planning and head out again Tuesday morning. Typically.

But there are variations. At busy airports, say like DFW, we do most of those inspections in the middle of the night. So typically we will work 1930-0400 for 4 nights starting on Sunday night. But it's still just a 4 "day" trip, and we get back home on Thursday morning. We have people that love this shift, and people that hate it. I'm in the middle, but regardless I haven't had a mid-shift trip in over a year. Sometimes if there isn't 4 whole "nights" of work to do, they'll gradually rotate us to more of a day shift over that time, making sure to account for crew rest.

But in any case, most domestic trips are 4 days. I've seen 5 days very occasionally, and sometimes they're just 1, 2, or 3.

Now, that's domestic. For international flying using the Challengers, they're longer - two weeks away plus travel time. Sometimes that involves flying the jet out there or back, other times it involves airlining to wherever it is. So those can easily become 2.5 weeks away.

Except for the international work and the occasional Sunday night mid-shifts, weekends are pretty safe. I have no problem planning things on weekends and being all-but-certain I'll be able to make it. When we do have weekend work (most common example is to do inspections at military fields which are busy during the week but often otherwise closed on the weekends), our managers will typically ask for volunteers, and they also do typically get plenty of volunteers. Many of us like to fly as much as we can, and weekend work gets overtime pay as well (time and a half).

Initial type rating training at Flight Safety or CAE does go through the weekend depending on your schedule. Sometimes recurrent training does too, although that's "mostly" during the work week as well.

Not in the program but familiar with .gov ops. Will leave it at that

the value of a federal job does not manifest in the "now" it is in the "later" - healthcare for life (ask your airline buddies about health insurance when they hit age 65) and a stable, steady, pension/annuity. Slow and steady wins the race.

if you are mission oriented and like a squad bay / duty room environment, federal flying has it. With that said, if you are retiring military, most of those boxes are checked and I would probably just weather the storm at JetBlue. By all means absolutely get that military retirement. If you have a TS, I believe your personnel office or whatever office, can generate a "Joe Blow held a TS Clearance at time of retirement" on official letterhead for retirement job purposes.

Best of luck

RussR Do you know if FAA Flight Check can hire a retired federal employee? I retired from CBP in 2024, currently flying fractional 135. Flight Check has a office in my state, am thinking about driving over and trying to catch someone. I've applied on USAJobs already, but being a retired Fed and collecting my FERS Pension already wasn't sure if it was a show stopper. I'm retired Army Reserve also, but not old enough to collect yet so there's some extra points on the application haha

How close does one need to live to the assigned locations?

Is it correct that the Alexandria location is not flight check?

Thanks!

The hiring rules as far as that goes are the same as for the rest of the federal government, as far as I know. Which is not to be snarky, just that I know there are provisions within the federal government to re-hire retirees, and as far as I know Flight Check doesn't have any rules that are different. What the general rules for federal re-hiring of retirees are, I don't know, but if you find some articles out there about the topic, it should be the same for flight check.

The main flight check locations are:
Sacramento, CA
Oklahoma City, OK
Battle Creek, MI
Kennesaw, GA (Atlanta area)
Atlantic City, NJ
We also have a small office in Anchorage, AK

I think we have moved all of our operations out of DCA to ACY. But I am not in any kind of management position where I would know the current status or future plans.

As far as how far away you can live, I'm not going to say a whole lot since I'm (again) not in any kind of management or policy position. But I will say that we currently don't have a real defined radius of where you can live if assigned to a certain location. You are expected to be able to show up for scheduled trips. And while our "in-person" events decreased a lot in the post-COVID era, they have started to come back recently. It's also important to realize that you are assigned to that office and location, and at least currently, any travel to and from is on your own time and your own dime. If you need to drive up the day before and stay in a hotel, that's on you. If the trip gets delayed a day due to maintenance and you need to stay in the hotel another day, that's on you as well. It follows standard government travel regulations like any other government employee.

Been awhile, but I see RussR has been keeping up the information line!
I flew with a guy this past week who said that this forum thread was instrumental in him pursuing, and obtaining, the job; so knowing that at least one person got something out of this effort was gratifying.

I'll weigh in on a recent question about travel time and locations - RussR already hit on it, but I did just have a conversation about this very thing with one of the top dogs in the organization and I'll pass on this part of the news.
On previous posts you might read about a 'best practice 10 hr rule' - where you could be within a 10 commute radius from your assigned office.
Well...that is no longer a 'best practice' and it didn't work out so well for this organization. Seems that even though it was made very clear (as RussR did even in an informal manner), many of the people hired under the 'best practice' rule did nothing but complain incessantly, cause problems with scheduling, cause more work for the NON-COMMUTE people, so.....
at least for the near future - to be hired you will have to live in base once again. Now - what does live in base mean? Numerous people in different areas that we have offices are 'LOCAL' and still have 1-1.5 hr commutes. There is nothing written down as far as I know, so some of finer details might be discussed, be don't think you can live in Kansas City and wortk out of the OKC office any longer.

That is my unofficial take on the situation.

Thank you for all of the very informative posts in this thread. I have been considering this position for a while and am seriously considering a career shift. What does the OKC situation look like as far as King Air vs. Challenger positions? Is it a flow from King Air to Challenger after a few years or is that a bid position and therefore never guaranteed? Also, when you are mission planning on a Monday is that typically from home or in an office with the crew?