In the AF it is doable. Google Jeannie Flynn Leavitt and Fifi Malachowski. However, as others have stated you will be deployed more often than you might have taken into account. My husband flew F15E with both of those women. He was deployed @9 months out of a 3 yr tour. Deployed 4-5 months home for about 10 months, repeat. You would also need to throw in some short TDYs here and there (few weeks at a clip). On top of that you don't just fly during the day, but will also do night flights.
~ If you plan on having more children, understand G suits are not compatible with pregnancies. You will be flying a desk. Most females I know that fly fighters time their pregnancies, example they know they are about to PCS (move) they step out of the jet and take a desk assignment.
My point is just like your male counterparts, your spouse many times will be Mom and Dad. Both of these women are married to AF officers. Due to this fact they hired au pairs to live in their home and pick up the slack for them.
Typically at UPT bases they may drop only 3 or 4 fighters for every class. Our DS's class winged with 21 pilots. Only 1 16 and 1 15E dropped. The rest in the T38 track got Bombers. 1 got a FAIP. There were 6 in the 38 track.
I have planned to be a flight instructor straight out of school to build hours then go to the airlines
Believe it or not many of our AF friends kids have gone into the flying world. They either went AF commissioned or did something like you. 3 went to a private commercial airline school (2 yrs to get through the program --- multi engine). I will say it takes years and years of flying to make it up the ladder for commercial airlines. I mean yrs. The 3 that went this path started off with the regionals, very small planes, aka puddle jumpers. They than moved up to the next level, i.e. American Eagle which is a bigger puddle jumper, but their flights are still only about 45 mins long and they do flights like Abilene to Dallas with maybe 50 passengers, all day long back and forth between the 2 airports. None of that have moved up yet to anything that is larger than that and they have been doing this for 3-4 yrs now. Their expectation is that it probably will be a total of 7+ yrs for them to get to the big planes.
~ They have had to move along the way because where they were hubbed. One started off with Delta, their smallest puddle jumper. He flew Miami to Puerto Rico. Did that for 2 yrs. He is now in Minneapolis flying a larger puddle jumper. Has been there now for almost 2 yrs. His intention is to hopefully on the next climb to move back to NC and be based there.
This is also where you have to add into the equation that each time you move up the ladder, you will go back to the right seat and start the process of bidding all over again with a lower line number than your left seat counterpart. Many AF pilots will eventually go commercial. I will say for them the 1st 2 yrs they were gone for almost every single holiday because of their line number. None of them had to do the puddle jumpers, they all went straight into the bigger planes (7 series...737, 747, etc) because they all did their time in the AF (at least 10 yrs).
I am just pointing out that there are negatives with your commercial airline plan too from a family life aspect. Even when you get to the pinnacle of the left seater, you are still going to be gone often. We have friends with every airline (SWA, Delta, Jet Blue, Continental, plus UPS and FedEx) all of them have the same story. They fly about 3-4 days a week, home for 3-4 days, repeat.
Our DS is 90% sure that when his commitment is over with the AF he will leave. He is a heavy pilot. He already has our friends offering to be his reference with their airlines. He jokingly has stated that he does not want to fly passengers, and so he will go with a company like UPS or FedEX....boxes don't talk! He is married and has 2 small children, the AF op tempo is starting to wear on him. Both pregnancies he found out they were expecting within days of a 4-5 month deployment. Basically came home to a 7 month pregnant wife.
For my hubby when he was ADAF, he missed every Halloween from the time our youngest was 5 mos old until he was 8 yrs old. He missed our oldest DS's 1st communion. Came home from a 4 month deployment 3 days before our DD's 1st communion. He missed every birthday of our 2 oldest for 5 yrs straight (TDYs or deployment). I spent more anniversaries with my best friends than I did with my husband. We moved 11 times in 21 yrs. We have 3 kids. We never lived in the same house from the time I got pregnant, gave birth and celebrated their 1st birthday. In the fighter community it is common to move every 3 yrs.
~ You have a 2 yr old now. It is easy to move them, but you will owe a decade plus of your life to the AF regardless of your airframe. It is easy for little ones to move, but trust me when they hit that 9 yo age, there will be tears from them when they are forced to leave their school, their friends, their home.
~ There will be times when your children look you straight in the face with tears flowing down and say I HATE YOU. This is so unfair to me just because of you! Been there, done that and collected the check with my kids. It is short lived, but it still hurts, especially when they are in those teenage yrs., which your DS will be before you can leave ADAF. Assumption being even if you go to OCS in Jan., with a follow on to UPT, and start that right away. Your DS would 14 or so before you can bolt....yes, 14. UPT is a yr long and your commitment starts once you wing.
Our DS's closest friend out of AFROTC did 5 yrs (desk), left the ADAF 18 mos ago. She decided to go ANG. She had to apply to many units before she got picked up by a unit. She is going to UPT this month and knows she will be flying full time with a specific guard unit upon winging. She knows what airframe she will get, which is a heavy (C130). There will be no vying for a T38 slot at UPT, no matter what she will go the T1 route. Just like her ADAF pilot counterparts, she will move 2x before she gets back to her unit. UPT at Vance for a yr or so. Than she will move to Little Rock for 6 months. Than she will move to her Guard unit. Add in she will also do SERE and water survival somewhere along the way. Once at the unit she will spend the 1st few months becoming operational.
What will your fiancé do during those 2 yrs, especially if you are like our DS, Fencers DS or Stealth's DS where they go to Laughlin AFB aka He!! Rio? Del Rio is in the middle of nowhere TX. San Antonio is 2 1/2 hrs away. When I say nowhere, I mean nowhere. Get a 16 and you can be assigned to OH MY GOD NO Alamogordo. How about Mt Home Idaho, the hub of Elmore county with @10K people and 51 miles from Boise? Google these places.
~ There are very limited job opportunities for him. Will he be happy following you around and no true career opportunities? Trust me, been there, done that, and collected the check at all 3 of these places. How about if you get a 16 and assigned to Korea or Eilson AFB (Fairbanks AK)? What if you get a B-1 and are sent to Abilene TX. These are true chances that might occur. Those fun AF bases like Randolph, Elmendorf, Eglin. Hickham, Ramstein, etc. are not the norm. Goldsboro for the F15E (Seymour Johnson), located 70 miles out of Raleigh is more likely.
~~ Add on the fact that he will be Mom and Dad while following you around for your career. There are marriages that as much as they love each other, fail. The spouse loses their own identity. The charm of the AF wears off when their life becomes a single parent 24/7 for months.
~~~ The pay is good, but unlike the false belief that is always said, pilots do not make a million plus flight pay. I married my DH when he was an O1. DS1 was born when he was an O2. I had college loans that he repaid bc I was a stay at home Mom (1st op tour was England). Money was tight, but we also are financial savers. It wasn't that we couldn't afford things, but did I buy store brand no name cereal over name brand like Cheerios, yes! Did we always joke that when he made O3 we would than have money? Yes, but the problem was when he made O3, we had a 2nd child. This continued his entire career, make O4 and 8 yrs flight pay, we would be rolling in the dough...nope now we had 3 kids, all in sports, a bigger car (car payment too), and they were still young, which meant if I went back to work, and because where we were stationed, by the time we paid taxes and daycare since he would be deployed the money was so nominal that it made more sense for us to tighten our belt and buy store brand cereal over name brand so I could stay at home. That was our choice as a couple. I agreed to it, but I won't lie, there were times I really resented him and there were many fights over the yrs where I threw it in his face....I followed you around the world and was both parents, so you could live out your dream and tell me that you can't believe you get paid to do this, while every move I had to reinvent myself.
~~~~ Just saying talk to him, and I mean really talk about the reality he will incur for a decade.
Would I relive our AF life? Heck yes, in a heartbeat. The friendships we made are nothing like you do in the corporate airline world. Our 2 oldest are now married. DD got married last weekend. 1 table at the reception was jokingly referred to as our AF family table. These friends drove hrs to attend the wedding. We actually go to each other kids wedding and now call it our reunion. That is the beauty of the AF these friendships last a life time because only they get it. They are the people you celebrate the majority of your holidays together, not your blood family.
~ To also prove that the life is great even with all of the moves and deployments, I would say 75% of our friends that we served with, now have a child that is active duty. They all fly, except 1 due to vision. If our DS leaves as soon as possible, he will have spent the 1st 34 yrs of his life in the AF. His wife is an AF brat too. To me that says they loved the life too.
Sorry for the novella, but I hope it gives you even more insight into the pros and cons from both the commercial and military life.
