Active duty AF Officer (non-pilot type) checking in. The info presented thus far is very accuate with one potential change. I tried to switch over to pilot a year or so ago, and was granted a waiver for vision after having very successful PRK surgery. the flight docs at the time told me that this is a very standard waiver these days to grant, assuming the rigt amount of time has passed since the surgery and the vision checks out now. The thing to be careful with is getting the right type of surgery. PRK=waiverable, LASIK=not so much. I think the Navy may have different standards, but that is the AF policy for now. I don’t know if the waivers are granted to people trying to come in cold as a pilot though, or if that was something that was given because I was already active duty.
Naval Flight Officer checking in - I’m still on active duty and will say that most of what I’ve read here is accurate. The airwarriors board has a lot of good gouge, though it’s more navy-oriented.
Here’s my advice to you, and it may sound snide, but I’ve seen too many shitty officers with bad attitudes to not pass this along: If all you want to do is fly and have no desire to be a Naval or Air Force Officer, then get your PPL or CFI somewhere and do it that way. Remember, while you may fly for a service, your primary job is as an Officer for that service. Especially for the Navy, you will be expected to lead people and handle various demanding jobs at the same time and successfully, and many times in a harsh environment, like the desert or a carrier. And you will need a great attitude to do it. If you flunk out of flight training, you will probably find yourself doing this. If you make it through and get your wings, you will probably find yourself doing this, either as part of your flying job or in the years in between your flying jobs.
Figure that part out before you do anything else. Flying jets is great, but it’s only a small part of the job. Oh–one more thing. You may want to stop by an airshow somewhere and see if you can grab a hop in an old barnstormer or something. One of the many things Hollywood doesn’t show you about being a jet driver is pulling g’s. To me, there is nothing fun or exciting about it. It’s uncomfortable, hard work.
Duly noted. I’m a recent graduate and considering lots of things right now, but OTS via the Air Force even without a slot in flight school is very much on the table.
dgrdfd and threemae,
I am an active duty Air Force recruiter. Most of the things that LSL said are correct, but the thing about waivers is untrue. Waivers are for everyone and you CAN push them through. If either of you want more detailed information or need to ask specific questions, e-mail or PM me. I will be glad to help without all the usual rigamarole of going through a recruiter. Dammit! I can’t figure out the code/formatting thing to bold someone’s mane and don’t have time to learn right now.
To drift the topic slightly, is it possible to go in with the aim of flying transports, tankers, etc - not the fast fighter jets? I’m thinking that things like flying a Hercules in support of Special Ops could get quite interesting. Might it be more useful on one’s CV when moving into civilian aviation later?
I would second flyboy88’s sentiment. Flying is a big part of your job, but not the only part. If you’re approaching the military as just a vo-tech school for the airlines, that attitude is about 30 years out of date. Back when service commitments where short & the airlines paid 3x what the miltary does, that was a common attitude. Nowadays, with you needing to invest 10+ years in the military & not all of it in a flying job, and the airlines paying in many cases less than the USAF, the whole game is different.
You gotta wanna be an Officer, a doer of Administrative Deeds & a leader of people as well as a jet driver. I also second his comment that this is even more true in the USN than in the USAF.
Good to get billy0b’s up-to-the-minute input on waivers. When I was going through ROTC, the supply of candidates exceeded demand by quite a bit and waivers were a non-starter (unless your Dad was a Senator) until after you were well into pilot training and they’d invested serious money in you already.
As to Quartz: short answer Yes & Yes. Many folks enter the pilot training program aiming for transports and with an eye to a civilian career. As noted above, the rest of the equation has changed over the years, but there is no expectation on the part of the USAF or the trainees that everybody wants to fly fighter / attack.
You’re also quite right that there are some fascinating & challenging missions to be had outside fighter / attack. They tend to be very small communities with their own challenging entrance requirements.
Sort of. The process of becoming an Officer is the same regardless.
The first roughly 1/3rd of USAF pilot training is exactly the same for all trainees. At that point the trainees have soloed the T-37B or its incoming replacement the T-6-II.
At that point there is a split: the folks who score high enough, and who volunteer, are shunted onto the fighter / attack track & go on to fly T-38s. The others are shunted onto the transport / tanker track and go on to fly the T-1, a military variant of a civilian bizjet.
From that point forward the two groups are totally separate and the curriculums differ widely, aiming as they do towards very different jobs.
So no electives in the sense of being at the student’s discretion, but the emphasis does shift to eliminate skills & knowledge irrelevant to the student’s needs.