NAVY Flight School questions

G

greeneagle5

10-Year Member
Joined
Dec 5, 2007
Messages
347
This parent would appreciate any gouge on the usual NAVY flight school program, track schedules, highlights, links ( and options ?)....My Ensign just started Primary a few weeks ago . Thanks for any feedback !
 
Hopefully someone will give you more specifics, but every persons track through primary, advanced, FRS, squadron is highly variable due to all sorts of causes.

Hurricanes in pensacola, delayed. Tornadoes in Oklahoma, delayed. Sequestration, delayed (well hopefully not). Bad weather cancelling flights, delayed. All in all it can be very frustrating.

Your son/daughter should be able to give you their most updated 'projected' schedule through primary. Towards the end of primary they will select for advanced and that is totally dependent on what kind of pilots/nfo's the navy needs at the time.

Hopefully there are some more recent graduates who can paint a better picture of some of the steps. I went through a very abreviated version and it was several years ago.
 
kp2001 is pretty spot on.

There's lots of weird starts and stops with flight school. As your son probably has told you, the pool (the water one, not the "group of bored Ensigns" one) at API was down for repairs for several months, causing people to get behind. Currently the weather at Whiting isn't great, so guys getting sent there are twiddling their thumbs and (at best) doing sims because they can't fly. Guys at Corpus are getting through the syllabus quickly, but that could change.

One of my friends reported to flight school at the end of July and did IFS almost right away but didn't start API until January. She was basically all but guaranteed follow-on orders to Whiting for Primary but (surprise!) those got switched to Corpus at the last second due to the backup in Whiting.

As for selection and all that...yeah, ask your son. But it's all "needs of the Navy." Some selecting weeks there's no tailhook spots, sometimes there's a ton, sometimes almost everyone gets helos, etc.
 
My Ens, currently at Whiting for Primary, is "twiddling thumbs" with all the many weather issues...hopefully he's flying the sims !

Thanks,
 
Some things apparently do not change. There were back ups in the pipeline 35 years ago for the very reasons explained above. Weather, equipment, which squadron you were assigned to etc. Then if you miss an event, such as going to the boat, you might end up sitting around for two months like I did waiting for the next one. Looking back upon it, I wish I had enjoyed the down time more but all you want to do is fly and you get frsutrated when you aren't doing it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top