Part of the problem is that there’s a pilot shortage in the civilian world as well. If I had to guess, it’s the retiring Cold War-era military trained pilots retiring, and a smaller pool of post Cold War military trained pilots to replace them.
So the civilian airlines are raising the compensation to try and attract more pilots, and the military’s on the losing end of that equation.
Maybe some kind of warrant flight officer program might be in order? Like take enlisted men with the proper qualifications in terms of physical condition and aptitude, train them up, and put them in service with lesser, but broadly similar pay/benefits as commissioned pilots. Then, if they want to actually hold a command position, have a track for commissioning that requires another 10 years of service or so?
As a response to the Colgan Dash 8 crash at Buffalo, the FAA mandated that you couldn’t fly for an airline unless you had at least 1500 hours and an ATPL. This probably didn’t affect the majors because you’d have those things prior to joining them anyway, but it will have put pressure on the regional airlines who relied on a supply of relatively low hour pilots willing to work for very little money.
In addition, looking at the industry on an international scale, some airlines are in a big expansion phase. Emirates is doing so much hiring that they are approaching pilots out of the blue. Ryanair, in Ireland, is hiring pilots straight in as captains when they don’t even have a type rating.
As always, it’s not that there is a shortage of pilots, it’s that there is a shortage of experienced pilots. Ex Air Force pilots have experience and should be able to get work relatively easily.
In the last six months I’ve been contacted by three different companies about employment opportunities. This has been on the strength of my minimal LinkedIn profile where I don’t have a photo or a resume. For someone actually looking for work there would be more interest.
My son was all set to go to the academy. The soccer coach was excited to have him. He had over a 4.0 GPA. He is extremely physically fit and has 20/20 vision.
They found out he had cancer when he was 8 and told him no thank you.
They’re already doing this for drone pilots, Would make sense to me to also spread that to some of the cargo planes. Do C-130 and C-5 pilots really need to be officers? Enlisted men can fly Helicopters in the Army, not sure why they can’t fly cargo planes in the USAF.
The F35s that we sell to other countries have different electronics/software and general capabilities, i.e. They are gimped in some (classified) fashion. Having foreign F35 pilots fly US spec F35s would kind of be a problem.
That was the case for previous fighters like the F-16, but from what I can find out the F-35 development partners get the same version as the US. Officially there is no difference between the US and export models, development partners have already been cleared to have access to the tech in the F-35.
And yeah sorry I should have said “why do you need commissioned officers to fly cargo planes?” Damn warrant officers… neither fish nor fowl.
I seriously doubt we sell “monkey-model” fighters to our NATO allies, at least. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did something like that for developing countries or unstable ones though.