What does “multiple red strips in the T45” mean?*Yes, mostly along for the ride
**if you care more about how, read below
Well for one, a basic assumption is that they are going from flying tour to flying tour during those first 10 years. Which isn't by any means a guarantee. But assuming that, it probably has more to do with your particular first squadron's deployment schedule. Do multiple cruises during that first tour, and • yourself out to the flight schedule, you'll be hours king. Being a tanker pilot helps in that scenario as well. Shore tour (the second one, after your first tour), really is just kinda hit or miss. Most of those flying jobs are what we call "production" tours, in other words instructing somewhere. Historically those have been busy places with lots of flying, however multiple red-stripes in the T-45 hurt some of those guys. And we feel the second and third order effects of any flight school delays/production slowing, since they feed us all our newly winged students. But the biggest factor, and one out of anyones control in the cheap seats, is the flight hour program/allocation. That first tour where you would typically make your flight hour money, can be crushed into feast or famine, depending on year/timing/politics/etc. You might do an 11 month deployment, do a couple months of sustainment afterwards (funded to be ready to immediately re-deploy if needed), and then drop to the very bottom of priority for parts, and personnel. This is an area where I got lucky in two different tours, while peers struggled in their particular squadrons that were just more unlucky. This part is called "basic" phase, and can, in more extreme examples, amount to 1-2 airplanes being available to fly in a 12 jet squadron on any given day. Eventually you rejoin the pre-deployment workup cycle, but there can be a solid 1-1.5 years in there that is very much not flying a lot. Like I said, I got lucky, but for those who went to places hurting like that, you can imagine that barely flying for a year and half out of a 3 year tour won't be balanced out by a lot of flying for 6-9 months on deployment. That is a long winded, and potentially jumbled confusing mess of an answer, but perhaps it answers your question.
UAL Mil Pilot Program
- Thread starter MikeD
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knot4u
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Based in Key West? I have no I idea, but I have been to the Bahamas a couple of times.
///AMG
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Red "stripes". It's a colloquial term for "the airplanes are temporarily grounded for some airworthiness issue". Most of these are rather short lived, but there were a couple in the T-45 world that lasted long enough to have an impact on student throughput, creating all kinds of 2nd and 3rd (maybe even 4th) order effects.
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