Hello, everyone, and welcome back. Today I’m going to talk about my timeline. So a lot of people have been asking me what the timeline for the air force looks like. So today we’re going to talk about that. I’m going to talk about my career prior to entering the air force, what that looked like and how that helped me once I got out of my seasoning tour.
So if you’re ready, let’s get to it.
Okay, so timeline. Everybody wants to know what happens after I get hired. How long is it going to take me to go to officer school? How long is pilot training? What is a Prague tour?
What does that even mean? And then when can I expect to be out? And a traditional reservist possibly applying to the airlines. So today we’re going to dive into each of those scenarios, situations. But first, I want to talk about this is all going to be my example and how things went for me in the 2012 all the way to present day.
So things have changed in the pipeline since I went through. It seems to be going a little bit quicker than when I went through. And then with the COVID procedures kind of coming to an end, it looks like pilot training is picking up steam, adding more classes per month and more students per class. So for me, I was a CFI Mei ground instructor with about 700 hours before I applied to the military. So that’s going to come into play later on.
But all that did for me was once I got to my t six phase, I was ahead of everybody up until about formation. So t six starts off with your contact phase, which is just pattern work. Then you do your instrument check ride, and then you go to formation. Very few people have ever done formation before, including me. So I think that having prior time gives you the leg up up until the formation phase, and then everybody’s about on the same page, and then you’re just competing from that point on.
So the hours really didn’t matter. It did help me not stress so much about kind of the beginning phases of pilot training. Just learning the new aircraft was all it did provide me the opportunity to help teach some of my other classmates and learn to be a better leader and a good officer to my fellow classmates.
700 hours I applied. You already know my story, but what I’m going to do is I have a whiteboard that’s got all the dates broken down. So we’ll go to that and I’ll explain each of the steps. Okay. So I apologize if it has any kind of glare on the whiteboard, but this is going to be my timeline.
And we’re going to start with swearing into the air force. We’re going to go through my military career on this side, and then my commitment. So what is my commitment each month to Alaska Airlines? What’s my commitment to the air force? How much flying time did I get while I was going through pilot training?
And then what can you expect? So, like I said, each of these things has changed since 2012 all the way through the present. So I’ll try to highlight any of those changes that I know have come about in the last few years. So when I swore in, I got the job, and about two months later, I swore in in September of 2012. You swear in as an airman.
And then prior to this was called the Academy of Military Science. At the time, it was the guard commissioning source. It has since been rolled into officer training school with the reserves and the active duty. It is a nine week course in Montgomery, Alabama. But at the time, I went to AMS, and you are promoted to e five prior to going to officer school.
And then upon graduation, you are a lieutenant. Following that, I came back to my home unit, and they didn’t have anything for me until pilot training, which I went to Shepard Air Force Base, which is called NJEP Euro NATO joint jet Pilot training, if you’re not familiar. So I went back to flight instructoring. During this time, the squadron did give me the opportunity to go to sear, and I didn’t know what that was. So I was like, sure, because I wanted a paycheck, survival, evasion, resistance, escape, that is in Fairchild, Washington, a couple of week course.
So in between flight instructing, I did the August course, went back to flight instructing, and then shipped out to injept in October, November of 13. So it’s a year long course, and I graduated in December of 2014. And because I was f, did follow on training for fighters, which is the IFF course, introduction to fighter fundamentals. For me, that course was still at shepherd. Some people did have to go to alternate bases, whether they didn’t provide that course at the pilot training base that they were at or they were full.
So fortunate for me, I stayed, didn’t have to move or anything. Completed IFF in February, and then moved to Klemouth Falls for the f 15 B course, which is, I believe, seven ish, eight months long. So the B course, heavy on the simulators to begin with, and then jumps right into the flight portion pretty quickly. A couple of months in. Like I said, you guys all know my story, so I made it through about five months of the course, and then I washed out and reasons for washing out were overperforming the aircraft too many times.
So in the B course, you’re given five, what we call hooks, which are failures of the ride. That day I completed all. I used all five of my allowable hooks based on just overgeeing the aircraft too many times, not getting the proper feel for it during the BFM phase of training, so I was reclassified. I could do anything except for fly fighters, so I could do heavies of any sort. I chose the C 17 for obvious reasons and was lucky enough to stay on the west coast and go to Travis.
So there was a couple of months in there where I was basically on casual status, still maintaining a paycheck for a couple of months, and then transferred over to the reserves from the guard to the C 17. Once I got there, they gave me a couple of months before they had acquired the pilot initial qualification course at Altus Air Force Base for the C 17, which is four months long. My Prague tour is six months at the time. Currently they’ve cut it back to about three to four months. And they’re also introducing this new program called the Tdart program.
I’m not sure that that’s going to continue to stick around, so I’m not going to go into too much information on that. But what you want to know is for the heavy units, you’re going to get about three, four months as of now of Praguetour, and Praguetour is just for you to go flying. You’re not going to have any other additional duties. It’s just a time for you to focus on learning the aircraft as much as possible before you go to a part time status. So this is full time pay, active duty orders for the fighter units.
It’s going to be two years for your Prague tour because they want you to upgrade to two ship flight lead prior to becoming a traditional guardsman or traditional reservist. So for me, I was looking for a full time job in the squadron, and for us it’s the air reserve technician program. So I became an art, which is the civilian equivalent of being an officer in the air force. So I was doing all the same duties. I was just paid as a civilian, but I also had my military duties in addition to that.
So basically two jobs doing the same thing. But what that afforded me was the time to acquire more flying time so that I could apply to the major airlines. So when I talked about my previous aviation experience prior to going into the military, why I wanted to mention that was so I had time, 700 hours ish going into the military, and then I got flying time from pilot training, and then I got a bunch of time flying the c 17. What that afforded me was the opportunity to skip the regionals altogether. So I went from being a CFI to doing a few years in the military, bypassing the regionals altogether, getting a way better paycheck as a lieutenant than as a first officer at a regional, getting paid $40 an hour military experience, and then given the opportunity to apply directly to the major airlines.
So we all know prior to pandemic, the airlines were going crazy. So I did get picked up by Alaska Airlines, flying the Airbus out of San Francisco. I was hired in January of 2019. So that’s kind of my timeline. Things have increased, like I said, a little bit.
They are expediting everything from swearing in to piq. So they’re trying to condense all of this so that they’re not paying you to sit somewhere for any amount of time. They’re trying to expedite those, get people back to the squadron because the air force is behind on pilots. They’re trying to get you out the door so that the next person can come in.
So over here, just kind of want to talk about the time commitments. People want to know what it’s like to be an airline pilot. And these are kind of generalities I don’t want to get into too specific because the scheduling can be crazy. So Alaska Airlines, if you have a line, you’re going to fly roughly 14, 1516 days a month, depending on that line. And it’s broken down into three day trips, four day trips, you’re going to do a couple of those, whatever the math equates to doing about 14 to 16 days per month.
Obviously, with more seniority, you’ll fly maybe a little bit less per month and then have better options of the time dates, whether you’re going to fly weekends, you get those holidays off or not. But if you’re sitting on reserve, what you’ll do for about the first year. Right now, it’s about 18 days a month of just sitting reserve and waiting to be called. However, right now they’re calling everybody. Nobody’s just sitting in a crash pad.
Everybody’s flying. So they’re using reserve pilots very often right now. Commitment for the air force, the C 17 does have a lot of commitments, but it’s nowhere near what the fighter aircraft needs. So I do about three to five days per month, and that’s the minimum in order to stay current and qualified, I can do more. And this doesn’t include going on any missions or going down range or anything.
This is strictly ground currency, flying the locals and doing my simulators. Fighter aircraft, I believe, is going to be more around ten ish days per month because they do have a lot more requirements. And the flying is 1 hour at a time. With all the briefs and debriefs, it just requires more days per month and then flight time. So again, things are changing.
Right. They’re using a lot of AI, the upT. Next, you’ve got the civil path of wings program. Who knows how much of the actual flying in an aircraft that they’re going to take away from you? But at the time, I had about 100 and 8200 hours of flight time in Upt with 180, plus additional 20 for IFF.
So, yeah, I left there with about 200 hours in the t six. The t one? Not the t one. The t 38. I flew fighters.
And then you do basically three months of sims at C 17 Piq. And then you do three flights in a check ride, which equates to only about 16 hours in the aircraft before they send you out the door with a signed form eight. And you are a certified copilot in the c 17. So my Prague tour, again was six months long. I was able to roughly pick up about 200 hours or more in those six months.
And I think that’s pretty realistic. Now, people on Prague tour, my squadron is really good about making sure that those people fly because you do have such a limited amount of time before life gets in the way. You go part time, you go back to a civilian job, you really want to get the most flying that you can while you can. So fly your butt off while you’re on your Prague tour, whichever airframe you’re in. And then we talked about the C 17 flying hours.
There’s a breakdown of the different types. So a local, every local is 4 hours long. And that a local consists of local traffic pattern, aerial refueling, and then a low level, and then back to base for more traffic pattern stuff. And then we often do two to four missions a month for the squadron. So you can pick up a mission.
And a mission typically is between 30 and 40 hours long and about five to seven days total. So that gives you a breakdown of the timeline. The things that I’ve experienced, tried to highlight some of the changes since then. And then once you get out. So you’ve done all of this.
Let’s say you don’t do the full time position you do your Prague tour and then you become a TR, which is called a traditional reservist, which is also called the part timer. So that part timer is now only required to do the minimum days per month. So if you don’t have a civilian job, this is all you’re going to get paid unless you do a lot more of the mission flying, which you can pick up in addition to these and locals. So there is a way, people call them troughers. They basically just feed off anything that’s available on the schedule.
They have no bias. They’ll fly anything to make a paycheck. So those people try to make a full time paycheck just troughing it. But most other people do something on the outside or get a full time job in the squadron if available. So things to think know, how do you transition from your Prague tour to civilian life or traditional reservist?
And then if you want to go to the airlines, what does the airline plus the Air force look like you’re going to have about? It could be 20 days a month or more of work. So think about that when you are considering it, depending on your situation, your family dynamic, and obviously pay. All right. So I hope that helps clarifies some of those questions that you guys had.
Before you go, I wanted to show you this cool shirt I got. It’s moose driver c 17 Glowmaster. It’s got the air force and Nike symbol on it. I’m going to provide a link down below. It’s on fanatics.
Also, there’s another c 17 T shirt I’ve worn in some of my other videos that’s going to be available, too. Check those out. Those are really cool. Thanks again. I hope that helps.
And leave any comments, any questions you guys have. And I’ll be sure to get to those as quickly as possible. Take care.