What are you flying? That makes a difference.

 

Tankers (135s)

 

EFD01
I'm a tanker guy too, coming off active duty you will take a slight pay cut, but trust me you will be fine financially. As an O-4, you would only have to work about 6 days a month to make more than a first year regional guy. The best bet is to just ask the squadron you are about to join how many man days you can expect. With the way the reserves/ang are being used now, and with just basic currency requirements my squadron is upset with me when I can only give them 6 days.
jdt30

 

Why not take a regional job for the medical benefits? You can always mil leave a third or half your regional line to make money at the Reserves. That way you have Part 121 experience and a decent paycheck.

I made around 40K my first year in the USAFR while on probation at UPS. I was an O-3/O-4 during that period. I think I could have made at least 60-70k if I had been troughing.

 

[QUOTE=L'il J.Seinfeld;121395]Why not take a regional job for the medical benefits? You can always mil leave a third or half your regional line to make money at the Reserves. That way you have Part 121 experience and a decent paycheck.

I've got a few guys in my squadron that are flying for a regional and taking mil leave quite a bit. The problem is when you go for that major interview, and they see you've worked for a regional for two years and only have 100 hrs in a crj how are you going to explain that?

Why not keep troughing making 60-70k pay for insurance out of your pocket, and postpone your suffering until your first year at a major. Again just my 2 cents.

 

[QUOTE=jdt30;121399]Good point, but the majors are not going to ask anything about your mil status while at the regional...it's against the law. The HR folks are pretty versed at it. Besides whouldn't you still get 35-40 hours a month at a regional working half your line? Why suffer at all? USEARRA gives you a "blank check" to volunteer all you want for mil duty. O-4 pay is pretty good and beats the heck out of the 33k you'd make on probation at CAL or UPS.

I think guys coming from the military are so used to "service above self" and sacrificing for their squadron mates that they make things harder on themselves than they should. You need to take care of yourself/family first in the airline business, IMO. You owe the airline nothing. They are trying to squeeze you for all you are worth. There is nothing wrong with getting hired somewhere, completing IOE and then volunteering for 6 months of orders somewhere with the Reserves. Personally, I dropped about a quarter of my airline flying and got about 15-20 paydays from the Squadron while on probation.

 

It depends on the unit. If you can go to one with alert lines and a lot of pilots who are senior at the airlines, you could probably make some good money. It seems as though with most of the airlines hiring again, there are less bums than there used to be. So you have to decide whether you want to jump on every active duty day you can or go get that regional job now while it's still available. The guard/reserves and the airlines are on opposite sine waves. As a bum, you can take advantage of the fact that most of the senior guys can make more money at the airlines than coming in and doing an FTP and don't want to take a week of mil leave to jump on a 5-7 day TDY. They'd rather be home.