10,000 parts flying in close formation around a oil leak.

Coming into the home stretch with the Navy, I can honestly say...

Yeah, what all the other guys are saying. If you truly want to fly, pick the first DOD component that offers you a spot for OCS/OTS and flight school. Study you a&& off, party hard with your crew, and work your tail off for the fitness reports/OERs that lead to choice flying assignments. Once you have the hours and are current, you can either punch or decide to keep going for the long haul. Be warned though. Staying for the long haul, at least in the Navy, means flying a desk at least once or twice and promoting out of the cockpit. (gotta love the retirement check at age 42 though)

Good luck, bubba!

Wow. Now that I read what I wrote (which was at about 2am and half asleep), I sounded like a total douchebag. I suppose what I meant is that in relation to quality time that easily transfers to airlines (multitude of multi-engine choices), AF has a little better selection in the "heavy" world. Sorry bout that! I owe you a beer.

Is AD that bad? Do most want to fly for the airlines?

Yes and Yes.

You are going to get a million opinions depending on one's background and experience. There are plenty of people who want to stay in and make rank. There are also plenty who are jaded and want to get out and go to the airlines. When you are on "airlinepilotforums" you probably are going to get most of your opinions biased to the airlines. Go hit up baseops.net or airwarriors.com to help form you decision. Plenty of quality military gouge between those two sites.

Everybody has a different experience.
What I hear a lot on these boards was not my experience as a whole on active duty (thank goodness).
Do most want to go to the airlines?
I don't have statistics, but many of my peers through the years have gone to the airlines - it is certainly a transferrable skill set, but many have certainly chosen another path after military service (and then there are even those few who still want to fly - just not in the airlines )

Best piece of advice I've seen on the thread.

FWIW: I flew for both; a two-year exchange with the Navy. Of my Air Force buds, roughly 1/3 stayed and made it a career; if you include the ones who went Guard or Reserve, 66%.

But I only know one guy who stayed in the Navy, active, until retirement.

And I know one guy that stayed in the Naval Reserve until retirement, and it was non-flying, for points-only. He did that because he was furloughed. When the Navy guys hit their O-5 boards, they quit, because either way, they are promoted out of the cockpit.

Both sides tend to be fiercely proud of their branch of service, and rightfully so. But the track record suggests one is more sustainable/livable than the other.

FWIW.

Flying for the Air National Guard vs. AD gives you the choice/flexibility to do both, that's why so many here recommend it.

There's much less political BS in the squadron than on Active Duty, and the option to fly for the airlines at the same time.

Every reply so far has a grain of truth, some not so much. It really comes down to what you want to do and more importantly, what airplane you want to fly. If you can perform under pressure and max out academically/during check flights. You can choose your destiny in most places (Number 1 almost always gets first choice in selection for platform or location) if you just show up and like to party, you'll get what you get. You probably have or had a poster of a particular plane on your wall that you've been drooling over since you were a toddler. If that's what you want, go do it. If you want to fill a logbook with heavy time to position yourself for an airline career 10 or more years in the future, do that. Yep, you'll get some deployments and spend some time out of the cockpit, but every AD service will have some type of staff job or service school that will put flying on hold. Just realize you can fly pointy grey jets and still do the airline gig down the line. For those poo pooing Navy, I just retired at 22 years. I only did 9 months of that out of the cockpit and did most of 3k hours in Hornets. I just got hired at AA, so you don't have to fly heavies to be able to make the move to airlines. Good luck with your decision..