Career Intermission Program
 

In case you were unaware, like I was a few months ago, there's a career intermission program (CIP) alive and well in the DoD. My experience is with the Air Force, but I believe the Navy has a similar program. The services have been doing a TERRIBLE job advertising this, though, and I only stumbled upon it because I desperately googled "Air Force hiatus."

Big picture: you can take 1 to 3 years off from active duty to do whatever you want. It was originally sold to CCs as a means for women to be pregnant (which is probably why no one knows this exists) but officially it is for members to pursue "personal or professional goals" like starting a family OR hacking a seniority number with your favorite major airline. You keep Tricare, get paid 1/15 of your monthly pay (base pay?) and hold a DD-214 while staying scrolled in the IRR. They pay to move you wherever, and when you come back to AD they pay to move you again. The debt is 2 months active duty for every 1 month on hiatus, so a minimum of an extra 2 year ADSC that runs consecutively (not concurrently) with UPT ADSCs, so it will add time to your service.

HOWEVER! If you are within 3 years of separating or retiring, you can get out now for a year, earn your seniority number before this huge hiring wave peaks, drop USERRA mil leave for up to five years, come back and finish your ADSC commitment, then return to your airline as a 3/4/5/6 year guy with thousands of line numbers behind you, have a super sweet FO schedule or maybe even be able to bid for captain somewhere junior, and have years of b-plan contributions in the bank. The b-fund contributions are like getting your own personal pilot bonus without committing to missing the hiring wave.

Caveats: you can't have an approved retirement or separation in the system to be eligible. I had an approved separation and was worried that if I cancelled it I'd get boned with a CIP denial and then have to restart the 6-month separation notification window, so I called AFPC and asked how likely it was that I'd get approved for my intermission. The major I spoke with told me "100% of officers that have applied in the past three years have been approved." I also discovered that the waiver approval authority for separation requests within six months is the local FSS/CC, another major. I cancelled my separation and applied to CIP instead.

If you want more details, search "CIP" in MyPers. They only hold boards for these 3x/year, and it takes ~7 weeks for results to get published. Approved members can then separate in as little as 12 weeks. For me, I already had my apps published since I was close to my separation date (at 18 years AD) so I just adjusted my availability date about a month sooner, but it'll be an easy guarantee to get the remaining 2 years of AD time I need for the full retirement vs struggling with sanctuary rules or fighting for IMA opportunities.

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/m...n-program.html

Hope it works out for you.

Interesting thread. I'm surprised there was so much negativity towards this program, as I don't see a difference between this and someone taking an AGR job, a full-time IMA position or volunteering for multiple deployments under USERRA to get to retirement either. Someone exercising CIP would actually spend more time as a junior pilot with their airline before returning to finish their commitment because the airlines would get someone for at least almost an entire year, maybe more, of all the crap flying/sitting reserve.

1. Earning an active-20 retirement is not an option for most reserves, the Army is probably the most accommodating, but the Navy WILL NOT let you go on orders if there's any chance you'll hit 20 active... only way to do that in the Navy reserve is to already be on orders and then get extended for mission-critical reasons. I've seen it and it's only been seals and one or two staff O-6's. The extension requests had to come from 3-stars, and included dialog with the CNRFC flags.

2. Most reserves don't do serial long-term orders, and get a little tired of getting flack on behalf of those who do, and those who actually abuse the system.

3. It's a choice... get out and join the airline, or stay in for O5/O6 and then join the airline. If the later, you have lower pay and seniority, but you have the retirement. This smacks of having your cake and eating it too.

4. As I mentioned in the other thread, make sure you can come back in five years. That provision will prevent most folks from getting a regular retirement.

But all that said, if it's probably legal. Not sure if the navy will grant leave for the purpose of joining the airlines, and I doubt the airlines will hire you if they realize what you're up to (the shortage might get to that point in a few years though).

It’s a damn shame the navy intentionally attempts to screw guys out of a full time retirement. If a seaman is willing to do 20 full time years, no mattter whether it is consecutive or broken up in chunks of orders, they should allow it so long as the seaman is meeting the standard for retention and promotion. But intentionally not giving orders for the sole purpose of preventing a retirement is effed up. What a p!ss poor service that doesn’t take care of those who served a career. Makes me wonder what they teach at that naval community college in annapolis. Half joking, but the point stands.

To the OP, you’ll prob be fine with your plan, assuming you get a seniority number at a carrier you want to be at. I don’t know exactly what the program entails, or what you have to disclose to your future employer, if anything, but I’m assuming you’ve figured that out and it all checks.

That said, if I’m a hiring guy at XX airline and I see someone with 18 years in who is applying, I’m betting said dude will drop mil leave for a couple years early on to get a retirement. They know the deal. Not legal as a hiring consideration, and plenty of people get hired in that demographic, but I’m guessing it happens. When I went to a DAL job fair, one of the recruiters asked me if I was completely out of the military or still in the guard/res. Don’t think that was legal for them to ask, but what am I going to do as an applicant. There’s a reason they asked. If airlines catch on to this CIP program (which they will as soon as guys do it), it will likely cause further scrutiny in the future, and I’m sure they will figure out who is doing CIP. Again, may or may not affect you (you got 2 CJOs so it’s worked ok so far) or anyone else thinking about this program, just a consideration. Also, you put some pretty precise identifying info here and in the other thread. These boards get looked at. I’ll leave it at that. Again though, sounds like it will work out for you, and I hope it does. Those couple years could mean big money/QOL if it works as advertised.

For clarity, the policy is intended to prevent traditional reservists from attaining a regular AD retirement. They do not try to prevent anyone from earning the reserve retirement.

Reason being, Navy reserve is not funded to pay for AD retirements. If a reservist slips through the cracks and gets to sanctuary (it happens), a senior officer will get fired, same as if he misplaced one million $ in cash.

Their force structure paradigm is to employ the reserves as traditional reservists, and cover all support requirements with drills, AT, and an occasional MOB. In return you can expect a RESERVE retirement at age 60, or a few years earlier. That's the deal and everybody knows it... if you really want an AD retirement than stay on AD, or become a reserve FTS. The difference with AD is you go where they tell you to, when they tell you to. With the exception of the rare invol MOB, reserves can mostly pick and choose their assignments. As a reservist I don't feel entitled to the same financial consideration as AD folks since I've been able to progress my civilian career and other financial activities in parallel with military service.

There are rare legit exceptions which I mentioned, and always a few folks trying to work the system, including one guy in my unit (he'd go far if he spent half the effort he spends scamming orders doing actual support to the command :rolleyes: ).

All that said, I think the DoD should have a consistent policy, although that would not and should not apply to the state guards. I've actually counseled a few senior enlisted and O4's who were hell-bent on getting an AD retirement to quit the Navy and join the NG, since in many states they have no problem letting reserves get the AD retirement. I just had that conversation with the aforementioned dude, but I don't think he believed me.

Yeah I had no idea the navy was so stingy until I flew with a couple navy dudes who finished in the reserves who told me it was basically impossible to get an active retirement. It just didn’t compute based on how many AFR/ANG guys swing active retirements, I figured there’d be no difference across services.

That's crazy to me. I'm an Air Guard guy and we have people getting AD retirements all the time. I mean...If you did the "active duty"...right....you should get the benefit of your 20 yrs active service. What are they going to do with the guy who bailed AD at 17 yrs and wants to be a contributing member of his/her military organization?

In the Navy he will get a very large reserve retirement. At 60.

Disclosure: This data is 10 years old.
In AFRes, the ‘Sanctuary’ zone is from 18-20 years worth of Active Duty points. I imagine it is the same across all branches.
If a member gets to 17.5 years worth of AD points, the beauracracy kicks in to scrutinize any orders offered to member, except Annual Tour, ADT, and drill.

The reason isn’t to deny an Active Duty retirement, because the Reserve Components don’t pay for retirements. The reason is that if a member is on the right type of orders, and crosses 18 yrs AD points, the member can claim the Sanctuary protection, and stay on active status until reaching 20 yrs AD points, followed by mandatory retirement. It is those (up to) 2 years worth of days that come out of the AFRC O&M budget. That’s what gets the O-6 fired.

In my unit, the one officer and one enlisted, who were 9/11-mobilized into the Sanctuary zone, claimed that protection, and were then transferred to Active Duty, i.e. out of the unit and out of AFRC. At 20 yrs AD points, they were each retired.

In this unit, there were also about 10 officers and 8-10 enlisted who were able to reach 20 yrs AD points, without having to claim Sanctuary protection. How, you might ask? Thank you for asking. After our one year activation, Active Air Force needed our aircraft and the crews to operate them. They offered consecutive full-time orders, eventually 12 months at a pop, to all takers.

When members approached the Sanctuary zone, they were put on the watch list. In order for AFRC to approve these individuals’ orders, the member had to sign a Sanctuary Zone Protections waiver and Statement of Understanding. Basically promising to NOT claim Sanctuary while on these orders. Sign the waiver, get the Mandays. Do it enough, you climb right through the 20 yrs of AD points. After that, AFRC is not liable for any O & M funding to get you to 20 yrs points, because you’re already there, or beyond there. The member can retire and join the check a month club, or continue in the Reserves.

I have no idea if the NavRes has anything like this waiver, or if AFRC is still willing to play the game. It is truly Win-Win, because the RC will not be liable for the O & M funds, since the member signed a waiver. And the Reserve Components never fund retirements-that come out of another DoD bucket.