Military Pilot Flying Desk Question
 

I am an AF pilot and a few years away from transitioning out of the military to fly for the airlines (Looking at Southwest in particular).

I have been in a non-flying position for the past three years and it looks like next my next assignment (the one before I would leave the AF), might be another non-flying position, not by choice.

My questions is, would the airlines only consider currency requirements ("active flying") to be only military aircfraft or could I rent a Cessna every two weeks to maintain my currency and fuflill the "active flying" currency requirement?

Any thoughts and information would be appreciated. Thank you.

Shadow

Flying a Desk, Can I stay "Actively Flying"
 

I am an AF pilot and a few years away from transitioning out of the military to fly for the airlines (Looking at Southwest in particular).

I have been in a non-flying position for the past three years and it looks like next my next assignment (the one before I would leave the AF), might be another non-flying position, not by choice.

My questions is, would the airlines only consider currency requirements ("active flying") to be only military aircfraft or could I rent a Cessna every two weeks to maintain my currency and fuflill the "active flying" currency requirement?

Any thoughts and information would be appreciated. Thank you.

Shadow

A few things might make this a bit more clear:

How much TT do you have, and in what aircraft(s)?

How long will it have been since you regularly flew military aircraft?

What kind of airline will you be trying to get hired at (cargo, regional, fractional, legacy?)

Thank you for your years of service, and good luck!

Shadow,

If your next set of orders will be for three years I would say that is really too far to tell what the airlines will be looking for then.

Right now however, your timing looks very good - in three years the age 65 retirements will be kicking in big time. Don't have your heart set on one airline (SWA) - be flexible and consider all the Majors, the Cargo airlines and the LCC's.

Any currency, like a C-172 is better than being non current, but what will be competitive in three years is what is important. I am sure you will meet most airlines minimums - but how competitive will you be with no military flying in 5-6 years? This depends on how badly airlines need pilots.

Good luck!

Scoop

As Smokey Robinson said,"I second that emotion." I have one more PCS before leaving the Big Green Gun Club. Hopefully the monitor hooks me up a little, but there are a lot of unemployed CH-46 pilots around to compete with for cushy station pilot gigs!

Disclaimer: Not a mil guy, know very little about your process, but thanks for your service.


When I was flight instructing, I had a KC-135 guy come in to get the civilian conversions done. Worked through the whole thing, got him set up. He hadn't flown in almost a year at the time.

Knocked out some currency, got him feeling good about it, he went and did a 737 type somewhere in Florida and got in the next SWA interview and got hired.

YMMV.

For many jobs you'll have to have a certain number of hours in the last (insert time period here). I haven't seen them listing only certain types of time required (Turbine, ME, PIC, etc....)
If you have a solid background, with a competitive amount of experience coming out of the military, I'm pretty sure that just having the numbers of hours required will suffice. At the same time it could get expensive to buy those hours if they are requiring a 100 in the last 12 months for example.

I am familiar with the federal government's requirements for recency of experience and in the last announcements a USCG pilot who is on a HQs staff job with little flying didn't make it past the HR folks because he had only flown 80 hrs in the last year and 100 was required (50% can be waived for internal announcement applicants)

USMCFLYR

Shadow1995's Flt Number, Thanks.
 

Here are my numbers by the way. With these numbers and potentially not flying for the past 6 years (at least military aircraft). Thank you:



TOTAL TIME: 2,387

Pilot-in-Command 1,484
Second-in-Command 903
Multi-Engine 2,077
Instructor Pilot 147
Turboprop 401
Turbojet 1,663
Actual Instruments 132
Actual Night 316
Combat 180

Those are perfect times for getting hired by a major carrier. I would highly highly suggest doing what you can to get a flying assignment prior to your separation. I know of guys that have gone back and done T-6 IP or something similar just to build up recency (as well as you'll perform better in an airline interview if your chops are up).

I'm an Air Force kid and am pretty familiar, but perhaps the current military guys can give you some better insight.

Oh, and in the Southwest interview they make you kill a kitten in front of Herb to prove your loyalty. You sure you want to join that cult? :D

And just to clarify, USMCFLYR is referring in his last paragraph to recency requirements to get hired into a GS civil service flying job. Am I correct?