Military Conversion Times for R-ATP?
 

Yup, another question about converting military time. But this is a unique one, I promise.

We know you qualify for an R-ATP at 750 hours if you went through a military flight program. However, 100 hours of this total can be in a simulator, per 61.159:

"Not more than 100 hours of the total aeronautical experience requirements of paragraph (a) of this section or § 61.160 may be obtained in a full flight simulator or flight training device provided the device represents an airplane and the aeronautical experience was accomplished as part of an approved training course in parts 121, 135, 141, or 142 of this chapter. "

It's important to note that the military simulators do not count towards this, but simulators from FSI and CAE do. So, as a military aviator, you can technically qualify for an R-ATP at 650 flight hours, right?

But wait, we can go even lower. Many employers allow for a conversion adjustment of military time to civilian. Some allow for 0.3, 0.2, or 0.1 per sortie, and others multiply your military time by 1.3.

So here's my question: If you're below the 750 hour requirement (650 flight + 100 sim hours), can you still get an R-ATP on your own? Or can you only do it through companies that convert your time a certain way? For example, if I add 0.3 for every military sortie or multiply my military flight time by 1.3, I'm able to reach the 750 requirement. However if I only add 0.2 or 0.1 for every military sortie, I don't meet the 750 number. If I were to pursue my R-ATP on my own dime, would the examiner reviewing my hours be okay with converting my military time a certain way?

The answer is: Neither

The 1.3 or whatever conversion is a convention used by *some* private employers to get an apples-to-apples quantitative comparison between mil experience and civilian industry norms.

The hard deck for employers however is that they can't hire you if you don't meet the FAA mins for at least an R-ATP.

There is absolutely no regulatory provision to grant mil aviators an extra 30% on top of their logged mil flight time for any FAA purpose.

Attempting to do so for purposes of aeronautical experience for a cert or rating would be logbook fraud. The universal penalty for that is revocation of all airman certs. This is not a "run it up the flagpole" or "better to beg forgiveness" kind of situation.

Right, but as I said initially, 100 of these hours can come from a sim, and various companies do allow for the conversion. So you absolutely can get hired with less than 750 military logged flight hours.

You're right there is no regulation from the FAA about the conversion, but the conversion still exists. I have military friends that have taken advantage of the conversions by United and other companies to reach minimums, which basically means the company is willing to vouch that you actually have the minimum hours. The FAA apparently has no problem with this. But this leaves a regulatory gap. Why is someone below mins allowed to convert their military times via an employer for an FAA certification, but someone who tries to without the backing of an employer unable to?

I have no intention of converting the time myself and plan on logging only what my military docs say, but I am planning on calling the local FSDO come monday.

Maybe someone else can weigh in on this, but what you're saying makes no sense. I've been doing this for 20+ years, multiple airlines, types, and instructor ratings. And I've never heard of this?

In the past the competitive mins were so high that there was never an issue with actually meeting regulatory mins for an ATP, in fact you had to have an unrestricted ATP in hand to even apply.

The FAA already grants extra credit for mil aviators: the 750 hour requirement is the lowest time anyone can have and still get an R-ATP.

Here are UAL's published mins, right off their website this morning:
Flight time:

• Require a minimum of 1,500 hours of total time
• Prefer 1,000 hours of fixed wing turbine time
• Prefer a minimum of 100 hours of flight time within the last 12 months

You may be misunderstanding what's happening. It's possible that UAL for example is hiring mil folks with less than 1500 hours logged hours, by giving them a mil conversion credit to meet UAL's published mins.

THEN they can credit some sim time towards the 1500 hours to get them over the hard regulatory line for an unrestricted ATP.

ALSO possible that they hire them based on mil conversion to get to 1500, and then if they don't get to 1500 actual hours in the sim, just give them a *restricted* ATP, which only requires 750 logged hours for mil. Then after they do some line flying they can convert the R-ATP to a full ATP via paperwork drill.

I would simply contact a recruiter at one or more majors and seek clarification.

I would NOT bother asking a FSDO because ...
1) They are often local yokel characters who don't understand all the nuances of the regs. FSDO's don't do airlines, there are separate CMO's for airlines.
2) More importantly anything they tell you is NOT binding on the FAA. If they are wrong and you hang your hat on it, it's YOUR problem.

What you can also do is write a letter to the FAA legal office and ask for clarification. They actually respond to those, reasonably quickly, and the responses are in a public database and often serve as "case law" for future precedent. I would ask two separate questions:
a) Can logged mil time be "pumped up" with a mil conversion factor by an airline and CMO for purposes of meeting aeronautical experience requirements for an ATP?
b) Can an individual do the same?

I'm pretty sure the answer is no to both, for two reasons:

1. I'm pretty familiar with the regs, including all things military. There's nothing that says you can do that. Flight time (actually "Pilot Time") is clearly defined in part 61.
2. Different airlines use different conversion factors. Why would the FAA allow variable standards across the industry? They wouldn't.

United's Military Pilot Program page has more information. Here, in the FAQ, they state:

"Certificates and Ratings: Does United use a conversion factor for military flying hours?
Yes, United converts military hours to the equivalent number of hours in our FAA Part 121
operation. This conversion happens in our system and is visible to our pilot-hiring staff. Enter
military flight hours as they appear in your logbook / flying records."

https://careers.united.com/us/en/uni...-pilot-program

https://cdn.phenompeople.com/CareerC...5909784405.pdf

So, they do their own conversions behind the scenes to calculate your hours. But whether that's 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 per sortie, or 1.3 of military flight time is less clear. Regardless of the method used, airlines clearly convert military time to civilian time that helps transitioning military pilots reach the required minimums.


Will be interested to see if anyone else can contribute. I'll report back with what the FSDO says, as well as any recruiters I can get a hold of.

"Required minimums" almost certainly refers to airline hiring policy. I'm about 95% sure that does not and cannot extend to FAA aeronautical experience requirements.

Since UAL "wants" 1500 hours, they can still hire folks with less actual logged time and either get them to 1500 in the sim, or just give them an R-ATP with less than 1500 actual based on 750 mil. I don't think they can, or would, hire a sub-750 hour mil pilot. Especially if they cannot get you to 750 in the sim (within the normal training footprint, sim is $$$ I doubt they would let you just build time that way beyond what's normally allocated for the program).

This makes sense. Although I do know people whose conversion allowed them to get an unrestricted ATP rather than their restricted, even though they were under the 1500 total.

Interesting discussion all around. Will report back if/when I find out more.

There are very specific ways those 750hrs need to be broken down to qualify for the R-ATP. I regularly encounter people who have the TT but are still short in various categories. Your sim time only counts as part of an approved training course… not sure those two categories are related (sim training and R-ATP mins… once again R-ATP mins are clearly broken down by category). There’s no .any conversions for the FAA minimums. People have asked and have been told no. The only way you could possibly do that is if you kept your own logbook in parallel to your .mil flight records since mil only allows takeoff to land time +5 min vs engine start to shutdown.

Maybe involving sim time. But I'm sure no major airline would do that with some arbitrary in-house conversion, they would know better.

I would agree that if you kept your own book and logged mil time per FAA standards, that would *probably* be just fine.

I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to go back and "reconstruct" such a logbook years later since that would obviously involve some "estimates", as opposed to logging the actual time the day it happened.

As you can see above, the answer is that there is no answer. There is no regulation that tells you exactly how to convert your mil time to civilian.

Adding .2 or .3 to each sortie is a reasonable and quite conservative way to convert military (wheels up to wheels down) to civilian (wheel movement to wheel stop) time. The thing that you need to be able to do is to defend this as a reasonable practice to whoever is reviewing your logs in an interview. Every airline I know of has accepted this as allowable. I think most FSDOs reviewing logs in any sort of audit would do the same, but it wouldn't hurt to ask someone.

Clear as mud? This is why there is a logbook review in any sort of interview. There are people who will cheat or do dumb stuff. Don't be that guy. Adding .2 or .3 to each line in your logbook isn't cheating or being dumb.

I would argue that if you log your time along the way, FAA style, that's 100% defensible.

Adding something to each sortie after the fact is reasonable, assuming your plus up value makes sense wrt to how ops were conducted at the time of the sortie (could vary between platforms and bases). But while it's reasonable, I'm not sure it's 100% defensible from a regulatory perspective... regs say you need X aeronautical experience, logged, and there is no provision for "estimated" time. Now we all tend to estimate our IMC time, never met anyone who hacks a stopwatch in and out of clouds. But the FAA's not up there with us hacking any timers either. In the case of mil total time there is an objective baseline record.

Since it's not written anywhere, it could come down to a personality-driven interpretation. As I mentioned before, if the wrong person decides you did something fraudulent, your tickets are gone. FAA admin law is guilty whenever they say you are, you're welcome to try a lengthy appeal process which rarely comes down on the side of the pilot. Flying is a privilege, you have very few rights.

If you can confirm that a specific airline does it this way, ie people are filling out 8710's and their CMO and APD's are issuing ATP's and type ratings that should be safe enough. But be certain. And don't assume that applies to other airlines without confirmation.

FAA no conversion. Campaniles, conversion amount depends. Generally you input straight time and they’ll do the conversion in their system. The only time you should Convert on your own is when specifically directed to, using the formula given by the company, and noting the unconverted hours and converted hours total where appropriate.

You and anyone else who plays this game is playing with fire. Do so at your own risk. People get away with lots of things until a bureaucrat decides a point has to be made.

I don't even understand why he thinks the 100 sim hours from the military counts towards anything. Didn't his reference specifically mention only sim time in a FAA approved training course as applicable?
Otherwise - big difference in what specific companies allow for their own applications and what the FARs allow to be counted for time towards ratings/certificates.
tnkrdrvr has it right.

I specifically said military sim time does not count.

No, the big difference is in how military logs flight time (takeoff to landing) vs how civilians log it (Hobbs or wheel start to wheel stop). I have had many military sorties where I spent an hour or more on the ground that didn't get logged. Doing a reasonable and conservative conversion of .2 or .3 per is fine as long as you are reasonable and consistent.

Show me in the FARs where how to log flight time military vs civil is defined. Hint...it doesn't exist. That is most definitely on purpose.

I talked to the delta recruiters about this recently. They request actual hours and they do not convert. They stated to always buy what your actual flight records show and let a company convert the hours if they deem it necessary. I had a friend who showed up recently and miss applied other time and they sent him home.

I kept my flight time in minutes. Been that way since day 1, especially when the glider flights were 2 or 3 minutes.
However I used the official off and on times with no 'coversion' factor to try and replicate how the FAA defines flight time. So my official military time, logged in tenths, is slightly different than my actual military time that was logged to the minute.

If any airline allows you to use a 'correction factor' that's the AIRLINE's policy and has nothing to do with the FAA or military definition of logging time.

No, it's not on purpose. For FAA purposes, you can log time THEIR way, even military time.

If you didn't do that, and have to rely on mil records then you'll come up shorter than what you were entitled to (for FAA purposes).

The problem here is that retroactively applying a conversion factor years after the fact is "estimating" and may not technically rise to the level of "logged" flight time as specified in the regs. That might get you in trouble. IMO that would be personality dependent with whoever was looking at it. If it were me (prior DPE) I'd consider it reasonable if you could aticulate your normal mission profile, flght vs. ground time.

Yes. Absolutely need to explain, articulate, show an example, and prove that you are probably leaving flight time on the table by being conservative. I totally agree. I am just saying there is no FAR specifically stating how to log flight time. That leaves a huge hole for a little wriggle room to be sensibly applied and accepted. Let's face it, you are getting ripped off on mil flight time, especially if you are in a platform with a lot of on deck time in the airplane prior to and after a mission. Used to be it wasn't an issue, but these days guys are leaving their first tour with 600 hours.