Hey guys, what does a typical "work" day look like for a pilot? lets take bombers/heavies for example, who travel quite often, do they get to spend some time on base/airport, or is it more base hopping type life? I would assume fighter guys and faips hang close to their base for the most part. Obviously, there are countless variables in play, but a general answer would be nice. This is not an urgent question, just curious. Much love to the heavy hitters and pointy nose boys for keeping the peace day in and day out!
pilot life
- Thread starter J3Rizzo
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rotccandidate2211
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I would love to hear as well!
Flew heavies in the AF, typically 1 or 2 trips a month, then I would spend the remaining 2 weeks in the office doing additional duties. It was a nice life. Then I finished up as a T-38 IP, a totally different lifestyle, flew once or twice a day, with additional duties as well, but home every night.
Both have pluses and minuses, but I liked them both a lot.
Hope that helps..good luck
Both have pluses and minuses, but I liked them both a lot.
Hope that helps..good luck
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This forum is great for what it does which is helping candidates apply for military commissioning programs. While there are some pilots around like Barky01, I don’t think you’ll get a good depth of responses. I would suggest looking on BaseOps forums where there is a lot of information like what you are asking.
Be warned: Spend a lot of time reading on their forums and learning what you can from other posts before jumping in and asking them to feed you information. They are not kind to people who don’t put in some research themselves.
Stealth_81
Be warned: Spend a lot of time reading on their forums and learning what you can from other posts before jumping in and asking them to feed you information. They are not kind to people who don’t put in some research themselves.
Stealth_81
raimius
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It varies a lot. You will have an office job, in addition to flying. Some of them might be an almost full-time job. Some take less time to deal with. TDYs and deployments depend not only on the aircraft but what is going on in the world.
I fly Hueys, and different bases do different missions. One base almost never goes TDY, but holds an alert schedule, so I averaged 1-2 nights a week on late evenings or stayed overnight at the squadron. Other units have week long TDYs every month or two, but work something closer to business hours at home (still tend to be on evenings one week a month for night flying currency).
I fly Hueys, and different bases do different missions. One base almost never goes TDY, but holds an alert schedule, so I averaged 1-2 nights a week on late evenings or stayed overnight at the squadron. Other units have week long TDYs every month or two, but work something closer to business hours at home (still tend to be on evenings one week a month for night flying currency).
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@Stealth_81 same with air warriors dot com and socnet dot com. Not paying dues there before asking for something gets ugly quick.
zachtx
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I fly SOF airlift, so it’s a tad different than the AMC bro’s, and it’s an overseas unit which adds it’s own unique flavor to the ops tempo. Home station, most younger guys fly twice a week. The majority of our local training flights are at night which can throw off the home life, but we do have the occasional day line. If you’re not flying it’s a pretty laid back schedule, but flying easily turns in to a 12-15 hr day. We get our fair share of SOF trash hauling which lends itself to min crew rest somewhere, but we participate in a lot of JCS and JCET exercises. Those put us somewhere in theater for ~3 weeks, where we spend every day with our host nation comrades flying and working together to build interoperability. Those trips are pretty awesome, and as far as I know, unique to the overseas units. Our squadron also supports some real world operations and alerts, but a public forum isn’t the best place to discuss those. It ebbs and flows with what’s going on in the world, but in general I’d say you’ll spend a cumulative couple months away from home, but you won’t be gone as often as the C-17 and KC-135 brethren seem to be. Feel free to shoot me a message if you have any more questions or interest in an overseas AFSOC unit.
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As you identified, lifestyle depends on your plane, base, qualifications, etc.
I fly C-17s. As a newer copilot, you'll be gone more often, but the days of being TDY 300+ days a year are gone. A copilot might expect to fly 1-2 missions a month that average 5-7 days. When home, you'll probably do at least one flying activity a week, whether that be in the sim or on a local. It depends on the squadron, but most copilots will get about six months without an office job to focus on flying, but eventually everyone will end up flying a desk. Once you have that office job, it's just a bit more balancing of the two duties. If you're at an airdrop base and have that qual, you'll trade some of the typical missions (i.e. CENTCOM support) for training with the Army.
I fly C-17s. As a newer copilot, you'll be gone more often, but the days of being TDY 300+ days a year are gone. A copilot might expect to fly 1-2 missions a month that average 5-7 days. When home, you'll probably do at least one flying activity a week, whether that be in the sim or on a local. It depends on the squadron, but most copilots will get about six months without an office job to focus on flying, but eventually everyone will end up flying a desk. Once you have that office job, it's just a bit more balancing of the two duties. If you're at an airdrop base and have that qual, you'll trade some of the typical missions (i.e. CENTCOM support) for training with the Army.