I'm a T-38 IP at Columbus. The guard and reserve send plenty of pilots our way that they hire off the street. The guard and reserve have a problem on the horizon and they are well aware of the problem: Next year the AF pilot commintment change kicks in. What I mean is, by next year the folks with the 8 year pilot training commitment will have gotten out, signed on for more active duty time, or joined the guard or reserve. The folks with the 10 year pilot training commitment can't get out until around 2010. So for 2 years, there will not be any senior captains or new majors leaving active duty to join the guard and reserve due to the change from the 8 year UPT commintment to the 10 year UPT commitment. So, with no influx of active duty pilots for 2 years, your chances of getting hired by a guard or reserve unit and getting sent to UPT are pretty darn good.

Oops, hit the reply button twice....

Depends on the class, but our top 4 guys in the class had over 4,000 hours combined flight time. If you have hours and a bad attitude, you'll go nowhere. If you've got hours, keep your mouth shut about them and are willing to learn more, you'll accel. IP's love to pick on the guys that talk about their civilian flying experience, whether it's helping them or not. They'll make an example out of you in no time. So if you do end up going to UPT with a few hundred plus hours of flight time, keep your mouth shut and let the IP's think you were born with great hands (sts).

Myself and the other 6 or so guys in my UPT class that had substantial prior civilian time had a *Slight* edge when it came to instrument phase and some of the academics. By the end of our 54 weeks, we were all equally trained and experienced...by the end, some of the guys with 20 hours were kicking our @$$.

Go Guard or Reserve. I enjoyed my tenure flying fast in the Air Force...I just wish someone would have explained to me the difference before I joined active duty. Now I'm getting out in 21.069 days (but who's counting) and have a Reserve job lined up. Took me 8 years to figure it out.

I am an instructor in Navy UPT or "primary training." Most pilots come in with about 25 hours from IFS (Intro Flight School) which the traditional civilian training. However, a few guys come in with much more. But I can't agree more with the previous post that anything over 200 hours is negligible. After a few months everyone is pretty much at the same level.

Gunnar,

I am an instructor at a TC-12 (King Air 200) squadron and teach all services the multi-engine perspective. From what I have seen the last 3 years doing this that those with 1000+ hrs do well in our advanced program. Most of the guard guys tend to be either below par or way above it. Reason I think is that some are content that they have a guard slot and don't work that hard. These tend to be right out of college and haven't had a lot of military time under thier belt. The other type are the young commuter guys that have busted their tails and fly well and love the fact that they are makming more money flying on AD than before.

The guard/reserve guys still stress over their other life and what job they will get to wait out the time building for the majors. The AD guys stress over their jobs because the pay is good but life can be hard with more deployments and etc...