I just graduated college with a business degree with a 3.26 GPA. I was planning on attending a local flight school but with no loan options available I am considering the military. I would be greatly appreciative if anyone would provide answers to these questions.

1. In your opinion what is the best branch of military to have the best odds of becoming a fixed wing pilot?

2. What branch offers the best benefits to its pilots?

3. What are the chances of me actually becoming a pilot? What percentage of people wanting to be pilots actually become pilots? How competitive?

4. What's the overall quality of life as far as spending time with family?

 

Here are a couple of websites for you to use for your research.

OCS Foundation Portal
FlyingSquadron.com - Military Aviation Portal & Forums

I can tell you about the last rated board that was held for the Air Force. There were 461 applicants of which 323 applied for pilot. Only 35 were accepted for pilot. Sixty-six were accepted for CSO and 16 were accepted for ABM making the grand total of 117 accepted for the rated board (Air Force announces OTS selection board 10OT01 results).

If you are interested in the Air Force you can get a lot of great information from airforceots.com. I don't know anything about the other branches, sorry. However, on the airforceots.com website you will see the links to the forums for the Army, Coast Guard, Marines, and Navy.

Best of Luck,

Tiger

 

1. The USAF. But there is a risk nowdays of becoming a fixed-wing UAV pilot.

2. All branches are more or less equal (military benefits are standardized), but Navy and USMC place more emphasis on being a military leader/manager...ie you will have a real job too. In the USAF you have a better chance at just being a pilot, at least as a junior officer.

3. If you apply to all services, your odds are reasonable with your GPA (especially if you had a technical major...they know the difference between EE and Poly Sci)). This assumes that you are reasonable military material...fit, athletic, people skills, can pass the medical exams, no background problems. The look at the whole person and the more well-rounded you are, the better.

4. Varies, but on average poor. Sometimes extremely poor. There will be unaccompanied overseas deployments, sometimes 6-12+ moths. In the Navy/USMC you tend to work long hours when you are home, I think the USAF and army are a little more reasonable when you are not deployed but it depends on the unit you are assigned to.

Be aware that the Coast Guard, Army, USMC, and Navy have a high chance of assigning you to helicopters. If you aspire to be a career civilian pilot that can be a problem because helo experience does help much with airlines and other civilian jobs. There are ways you can acquire enough fixed wing time even if you become a helo pilot, but it's not guaranteed that you will get such an assignment.

Most of us who have been around the block would VERY strongly recommend the USAF reserve or Air National Guard. You join a particular unit, so you know up front what type of airplane you will be flying...you can simply not apply to rotory-wing units if that's an issue for you. Also you can work on your civilian career in parallel with your military career.

 

So with loan options you wouldn't need this option? Wrong reason to join bud. There's way too much crap involved just to save 50K.

 

I'm going through the process now applying for a military pilot slot. I'm doing it because it's what I've always wanted to do. When I was a kid, I wanted one of 4 things: 1)To be a fighter pilot 2) to be a bomber/attack pilot 3)fly a helo and drop off a special operations team in the middle of the night 4)be a 747 driver. Right now, the Army seems like more likely that it's going to happen than with the other branches. After a few years in helicopters, there is a possibility of transitioning to fixed wing flying in the Army.

This is something that you deep down want to do, it's a long tough process (to weed out the people who really don't want it,) and it's very competitive. You don't want to get into this just to save some money. Good luck to you. If you want some advice from people currently going through this, ask any questions. Also, apply for everything. If you have your mind set on one unit or aircraft, it most likely will not happen.

 

For all stuff Navy, try www.airwarriors.com but search first before asking. Little patience for those who don't search for questions that have been asked many times before. Certainly, your questions have been asked many times before. BTW, about 45% of all Navy pilots are helo pilots so there's that.

 

Unfortunately I agree. Every time I read of someone who is thinking of joining the military, either because they can't afford flight school, or some other ridiculous reason, I think of John Candy in Stripes, when he was explaining his reasoning for joining the Army: "You got a what?... an 8-week course here? Which is PERFECT for me. I'm gonna walk outta here a lean, mean, fightin' machine!"

There are much better reasons to join the military, because being put in a position of losing one's life, just to have saved a few bucks, isn't a good one.

JJ

 

Money might be the initial lure, but I have seen some good people join the military for the wrong reasons...but still end up loving it, doing great things, and going far.

I tend to give young folks the benefit of the doubt, since hollyweird and the media have been running a disinformation campaign about the military for 40+ years. It's not always their fault that they don't really understand what it's all about. But my benefit of the doubt online only extends to those who can use grammar, punctuation, and express a coherent written idea...

I was one of the guys who wanted it badly for as long as I can remember. But at some point I learned that doesn't necessarily make me better than the next person in the military.

 

I agree, I don't think there is any one true reason to join. I've seen guys who joined for the "right" reasons...love of country, yearning to serve, etc and hate it. Some folks join to be airline pilots and love it. You never know.