Pilot license for military pilots?

If a pilot is trained by the Air Force or Navy do they also get a regular US pilot license? Or do they get a special version of a license?

I know some people join the military with a license already, I mean people who start from ground up in the military.

At least in the US:

Upon graduating from military pilot training you get a military “license” which is authorization to operate military craft per military rules.

For civil licenses FAA regs at 14 CFR 61.73 apply: eCFR :: 14 CFR 61.73 -- Military pilots or former military pilots: Special rules. (FAR 61.73)

In summary …

A military pilot can apply for an FAA commercial license with aircraft specific type ratings in any type-ratable aircraft he/she has been qualified on by the military. There is a short-form written test on civilian-specific regulatory topics. Other than passing that test, issuance is automatic.

Military pilots who are military instrument rated can get an instrument rating upon application with no tests. All USAF & USN pilots are instrument rated. When I was in many Army helo pilots were not instrument trained or rated as their aircraft were VFR only. That may have changed since my time.

Military pilots who are or have been military pilot instructors can get an instructor rating upon application with no tests.

Other than that, additional licenses or ratings are not granted automatically. When I got my ATP I had to take the standard ATP written and pass the standard ATP checkride. But all your military flight time counts towards the various experience requirements.

If I wanted a helo or balloon or glider rating I’d be starting from zero for those since none of my military experience was in those class or category. So I’d need to acquire all the experience, pass any/all written tests and pass any/all checkrides just like any other civilian.

Wow LSL Guy, you make me feel young. I started at Ft. Rucker in 1980. Everyone was instrument rated by then. Most of the folks in my class took the test to get our Commercial Instrument Rotocraft License. Haven’t flown since I got out in 1985. Still look up at every helicopter.

What counts as a “type”, for this purpose? Is it just fixed-wing, rotary wing, or are there separate categories for different types of engine, or size, or other criteria?

I’m actually going to define a few extra terms here.

In FAA speak, a category of aircraft would be something like “airplane” or “helicopter”, which might also be expressed as “fixed wing” or “rotary wing”. A class indicates things like “single-engine”, “multi-engine”, “land”, or “sea”. A type is more specific - all turbojets have a “type”, other aircraft over 12,500 pounds have a “type”. Mostly, this is important to airplanes (that fixed wing category) but a few helicopters are over 12,500 pounds and they require a type rating, too.

So, for example, if you want to fly for Southwest airlines you’d need, in addition to an ATP level license you’d need a B-737 type rating. There is a separate type rating for the B-747, or the Airbus 380.

So a military pilot trained to fly various large and/or turbojet aircraft would, upon getting a civilian license, be issued a civilian license with type ratings corresponding to the civilian equivalents of whatever military aircraft he or she is trained to fly. Where applicable. I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s no civilian equivalent of the SR-71 or U2, as examples.

Hmm. Color me a bit surprised. But I’m always glad to learn from the experts.

I did USAF pilot training in 1981-'82 and was assigned to a joint USAF / Army base from '82-'85. We worked closely with active Army OH-58, UH-60, and CH-47s. Sadly they had no shooters. I was under the impression at that time many of the WO pilots weren’t instrument rated. That may have been me reading too much into various regs that were mostly or entirely legacy by that time.

Bravo Broomstick. Nicely done. Continuing from where you left off …

Type ratings are only issued for aircraft that have FAA 14 CFR 23 through 29 civilian “type certificates”. Which means the FAA has blessed the design and manufacturing of the aircraft and all its parts for civil use. They issue the magic certificate to the manufacturer as proof of their approval. Other national authorities generally accept FAA aircraft certification on a reciprocal basis.

The vast majority of military aircraft never get a civil type certificate and hence don’t have civil type ratings. The C-130 is one of the few originally military designs to be civilian typed: Lockheed L-100 Hercules - Wikipedia . Far more common, as you say, is civil types later put into military service as trainers or non-tactical transports.

In USAF pilot training there’s always a contingent of trainees who are simply there as apprentice airline pilots and who strongly seek out the few aircraft types that directly translate into civilian type ratings. In the intense competition of the good airline jobs every little advantage is precious.
As to why pilot type ratings at all: Small simple Cessna-sized aircraft are less interchangeable than different brands of rental cars, but not much. If you can safely fly one you can safely-ish fly them all. So the FAA doesn’t mandate any particular training for one over another. Your insurance company may have more stringent requirements, but the Feds don’t care. Fly one, fly 'em all.

As the aircraft get more complicated that becomes rapidly less true. At some fairly arbitrary point the FAA mandates a detailed specific training and testing program about the aircraft, and ongoing specific experience requirements to keep flying it.

It’s always fun when we train on a new aircraft type. Two pros who’ve been doing this for years and who’ve been studying the new aircraft’s books and procedures for a couple weeks hop into the sim for the first time together. And proceed to fumble around like a couple of drunks trying to get the damn thing started and into the air. It’s not quite like that airshow act with the supposed non-pilot at the controls of the Piper Cub careening around the sky. But you wouldn’t want to be a passenger on that “flight” or any other flight nearby.

Bottom line: Type ratings serve a real purpose.

How much of a change is it to go from single (or dual) seat fighters to large commercial jets?

As someone on the small end of aviation - strictly civilian and the only thing I have beyond “private pilot single-engine land” is a tailwheel sign-off - I’d like to elaborate just a bit on this.

During 10 active years of pilot I flew 17 different models of small aircraft. While, indeed, a Cessna 150 flies/handles in a similar manner to the larger Cessna 172 much beyond that and they are, in fact, much more diverse than different types of rental cars and SUVs.

After decades of driving small cars the first time I climbed into a pick up truck and drove it away there really was no difficulty. It didn’t corner quite as tightly as the car (still doesn’t, in fact :slight_smile: ) and some of the controls were located differently (just as they are between different cars) but really driving a pick up and driving a car are much the same thing.

Not so even small, relatively simple airplanes. Let’s just start with the most obvious and visible thing - the yoke vs. stick. All cars/truck/SUVs/etc. use a steering wheel. Small airplanes use one of two very different mechanisms. Of what I’ve flown, the Cessnas, Pipers, and Mooney used the yoke. The RANS Airaile, Quicksilver, Max-Air Drifter, RV-7, Ikarus, Citabria, Diamond Katana, and Stearman all used a stick. I have found the throttle on the right side, left side, and even the center in various aircraft. I’ve found brakes located on the rudder pedals, but also on the stick. Most of them had the nosewheel/mains to the rear landing gear configuration but some had the main gear front/tailwheel configuration which is different enough that the FAA does require specific training for those. Although many of them had the standardized “six pack” instrumentation arrangement the ultralights, experimental models, and the Stearman did not - imagine getting into a car and not being able to locate the speedometer until you get out the manual.

That’s not even getting into the emergency procedures - the differences can be significant, both in theory and practice.

That’s for just aircraft coming under the “single-engine, land” category. Add in seaplanes (water only or amphibious?) and multiple engines (how many? One on each wing or front-and-back/in-line? Something else?) and things get quite complex.

The more different airplanes I flew the more I became convinced that taking 1-5 hours (minimum!) to become acquainted with the new aircraft was important.

I dunno - should I mention the Schweizer glider didn’t even have a throttle, and only one wheel for the landing gear? Did have that giant lever for letting go of the tow rope, though, that was new for me.

Commercial aircraft are very much more complex, with many more controls. Sure, the basics of pointing it where you want to go might come down to stick/yoke and rudder pedals, but everything else…? Yeah, type ratings make a LOT of sense.

It is very important to remember which lever is the spoiler control and which one releases the tow rope in a Schweizer 2-33… as former Gliding Club member in the Air Cadets I’ve seen what happens when you don’t… :smiley:

Big, but lots of folks do it successfully and very few who try fail at it. So obviously not too hard. As well, plenty of airline types still fly fast jets in the Guard or Reserve, switching between their Superman and Clark Kent personas on a day-to-day basis. So it’s apparently not that big a deal.

Military pilot training from the git-go is all about operating in instrument weather conditions to instrument flight rules (IFR) tolerances. In training aircraft that are broadly equivalent performance wise to airliners. Speeds, top altitudes, power to weight, etc., are all broadly comparable. Which makes sense since about 2/3rds of those pilot trainees are destined for military heavies. There are differences between military flight regulations and civil regs. But they’re differences in detail, not in fundamentals since both groups have to interoperate in the national airspace of whichever country.

Then in military fast-jet training the fast-jet stuff is layered on top of the instrument jet pilot basics: formation, weapon systems operation, dogfighting, bomb dropping, aerial refueling, etc. All of which is irrelevant to airline ops except insofar as it makes one real good at precision control of the machine in space. Which is certainly an airline-useful skill. Especially when the weather’s down to crap, the runway has snow, the wind is howling, and of course we’re still going.
Upon making the jump to the airlines there are a few broad areas to learn.

Civil specific regs and airline policy are of course all new. The stuff related to flying itself is similar, but the BS about when and how many life jackets are required, duty and rest requirements, maintenance logbook procedures, etc. are all fundamentally new.

The administrative side of airline airplane ops is also all new. How one plans and prepares a flight, coordinates with the ops command center at corporate HQ and with the local airport ops command center are all new. And not stuff tactical pilots ever messed with. Military heavy pilots dealt with all of these same concepts albeit with different details.
The biggest difference is operating as a crew versus as a solo. I had the now-obsolete privilege of starting out a flight engineer. Who has a vital job, but the job isn’t piloting. He’s crazy busy getting the aircraft ready for departure, getting it started and moving, then he just sleeps and eats until near landing. Whereafter he’s once again real busy until the jet is shut down and handed off to either the next crew or the maintenance team.

The “sleep and eat” part is an exaggeration, but the real point is the in-between time provides plenty of opportunity to observe two pilots in action working together to operate the aircraft, it’s interaction with ATC, with the company, and with our fellow workers to hand-craft the perfect airline flight. It’s an excellent apprenticeship into being an airline pilot.

Sadly that’s gone now. We now have newly hired trainees ride a few flights in the jumpseat of their assigned type when partway through their training. The goal is to meld all the part-task pieces they learn in school into a coherent whole. And to see the whole thing work in conjunction with real ATC, real other traffic, and real airports. Even so their first few months on the line as co-pilots can be a trying experience for the lucky captains who get to mold them into real line pilots.

Learning to work as a team takes practice. Yes, there are procedures and scripts and such. But there’s also the fuzzier human factors stuff of how and when does one speak up when one’s feeling behind, or believes the other guy/gal is starting to screw up? Or is well down the road to confusion and error?

Us single-seat guys never gave stuff like that a thought. In airlining there’s always 4 versions of what’s happening now and what’s about to happen next. What the airplane and its computers think; what the ATC guy/gal thinks; what I think; and what the other pilot thinks. Keeping all 4 tightly synced no matter what is key to physical and regulatory survival. Depending on what military mission you used to fly, there may have been only one or two of those before. Learning to stay coordinated with the other pilot when stuff’s going wrong and you’re task-saturated or nearly so is not natural at all. If there’s one built-in weakness in using former single-seat pilots as airline pilots it’s this; their instinct is to go solo when overloaded.

OTOH, many of the folks who grew up flying civil turboprops and now jets have never flown fast solo can get overwhelmed if they don’t have the help of another good pilot. Being able to juggle *all *the balls, and knowing how and when drop them in the correct priority order isn’t easy or instinctual either. Lack of that skill and deep mindset has risks too.

Late add. One more thing …

There’s an effort afoot in the industry to train *ab initio *copilots who never learn how to fly solo at all, not even in simple low performance aircraft. I’m deeply suspicious about the idea that most of those folks will turn out to be good co-pilots or good captains. Though that may just be my inner single-seat dinosaur talking.

There really isn’t much crossover in aircraft types between USAF and civilian these days, is there? The Air Force has some civilian jets that they’ve adapted for things like executive transports, but there aren’t many of those. They still use AWACS and tanker aircraft that are based on the 707[sup]*[/sup], but I haven’t seen a civilian 707 for years. There was also a tanker based on the DC-10, but those are getting scarce in the civilian world, too.

I can definitely vouch for seaplanes. You do the run-up check[sup]+[/sup] while moving. An airplane very much wants to turn into the wind, like a weathervane, which can be tricky when you’re trying to stop at a dock. And it can be very hard to judge your height when landing on smooth water, so you set up for a recommended speed and sink rate and hold that until touchdown.

  • If I remember correctly, the military versions were considered model 717, and I don’t know if they had a joint type rating with the 707. Boeing re-used the 717 number for a plane they got the rights to when they bought out McDonnell-Douglas.
  • Just before taxiing onto the runway for takeoff, a light-plane pilot will set the brakes, run the engine up to 1,500 rpm, and check the operation of things like the magnetos and carburetor heat. That’s the run-up check.

You’re right the civil world has pretty well jettisoned the 707, 727, DC-9 family, and DC-10 family USAF operates/operated. Those Douglas types are slightly newer and hence still have some staying power in the civil world. Meanwhile USAF 707 / 720 and DC-10 derivitives soldier on whereas USAF has parked their 727s and DC-9s.

USAF currently has 737s, 747s, 757s, and is getting 767s airliners.

They have Gulfstream IV, V, and G100 bizjets. And Learjet 35 bizjets.

They have Swearingen / Fairchild Metroliner, CASA CN-235, Dornier DO-328, and Dehavilland DHC-8 regional turboprops.

Other than the hopefully soon-to-be-large fleet of 767 tankers each of these fleets is pretty small. In some cases just 1 or 2 aircraft.

Now this scares the bejesus out of me.

I remember the Air Force had navigation trainers built on a 737 airframe, and I’ve seen DC-9s with Air Force markings and a red cross on the tail. I don’t remember a military 727, though; what were they used for?

And it seems like they’ve been squabbling over the contract for the next tanker fleet for decades. Is that finally a done deal?

[quote=“LSLGuy, post:6, topic:772300”]

Hmm. Color me a bit surprised. But I’m always glad to learn from the experts.

I did USAF pilot training in 1981-'82 and was assigned to a joint USAF / Army base from '82-'85. We worked closely with active Army OH-58, UH-60, and CH-47s. Sadly they had no shooters. I was under the impression at that time many of the WO pilots weren’t instrument rated. That may have been me reading too much into various regs that were mostly or entirely legacy by that time.

IIRC but am not certain, Vietnam era didn’t all get instrument rated. We had 10 USAF in my class. A lot of people are unaware that the Army trains all the USAF helicopter pilots.
Hmmm didn’t get the quote thing right sorry.

This idea has a lot of traction in Asia. And zero in the US & Europe. I’ll say “no comment” on the cultural and operational significance of the divide.

727s: When I was with Southern Command they had one for regional transport of the brass and civilian VIPs. They were smaller and less grand than the VC-137 = 707s they used for AF One & similar. After I left there they were replaced in the early 90s by the bizjets and 757s as the noise regs killed off almost all the civil 727s. USAF had a few others at roughly the same timeframe.

Wiki’s 727 entry Boeing 727 - Wikipedia has a list of military operators which doesn’t include USAF but includes this sentence in the intro text of that paragraph: “The United States military used the 727 as a military transport, designated as the C-22.” Doing a find on the page text for “C-22” locates a few more scattered details.

Here’s an interesting model. I’m surprised to see somebody bothered for such a tiny fleet. Diecast Airplane

Tankers: The squabble is over. Boeing is test flying the first KC-46s now with intent to start deliveries in late, late 2017. It was/is a fixed price contract where Boeing needs a lot of good luck going forward to pay for all the screw-ups they’ve made in the last 3 years on this thing. It’ll be a good machine once it’s fielded. Whether USAF is able to hold the line on buying enough total airplanes remains to be seen.

This thread came at an interesting time for me. My father recently passed away at 88, he’d been a Marine Corps pilot: props, jets and helicopters (and a mustang to boot). In going thru his personal effects I’ve gathered 5 flight log books and a yellowed FAA Commercial Pilot license from 1966.
The license reads: dba Fred’s Father has been found to be properly qualified to exercise the privileges of Commercial Pilot.
Ratings and Limitations: Airplane Single and Multiengine Land*
Douglas DC-3s - Instrument*
Rotorcraft - Helicopter Sikorsky S-58*

At some point I hope to decipher the log books or find out if the Marine Corps/Navy has a transcription.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that there is a civilian U2, albeit not used commercially. NASA has a few that they use for high-altitude atmospheric research.

I’m sorry to hear of your Dad’s passing. It sounds like he lived and flew through the Golden Age of aviation.

At least in USAF in the 1980s they did keep records that amounted to a log book: date, aircraft type & serial number, and nature and quantity of hours flown for each flight.

But upon separation from the service you either got a printout right then or the records got trashed as part of bundling your service history off the national records archive. They didn’t (at least in my era) keep every piece of data and every piece of paper they ever accumulated on you. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d bet that the farther back in time we go the less info was kept about any individual service member.