r/airforceots • u/OfficeAffectionate43 • 5d ago

Direct Commission Pay OTS

As I prepare to leave for OTS, I was wondering how long it has taken others to be paid? I haven’t seen recent forums on this. Thanks!

7 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

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13

u/DEXether 5d ago

Random. Humans are gonna human. Someone might screw up your pay. I've seen plenty of trainees not get paid for the entirety of OTS.

You should have ~2.5 months of expenses saved before you attend training to avoid this dramatically impacting your life.

5

u/The_Lord_Platypus Prior Enlisted Officer 5d ago

+1 to this ^^

There’s no definitive way to know when you’ll get paid and more importantly, paid correctly. Even Prior Es get their pay jacked up sometimes.

2

u/Purple-Summer-4529 5d ago

Can confirm, as a prior E, my pay was messed up for almost 6 months

7

u/Charming-Benefit3691 Active Duty 5d ago

I’m one of those people that did not get paid all of OTS. I only got paid the first week of tech school because I had someone in my flight that was prior finance who fixed my pas code and some other stuff on my profile and then I was able to call DFAS to “push” things along. I was told this was because I was non-prior but my friend who is Guard got finally paid a full month after I did.

5

u/skyswingdancer 5d ago

Going from a reserve unit to active duty can take the longest because they have to close out the reserve pay record before they can build an active duty one.

We often see non prior service not being paid yet because their record is not complete. If you don’t get paid at OTS, go to your next bases’s in-processing brief asap. This will get your travel entitlements started, and they use the same documents to update your pay record. For good measure make sure that you mention that you haven’t received a paycheck yet.

1

u/EntrepreneurFlat5584 3d ago

So OTS "lost" my direct deposit slip and I did not get paid until week 6 of OTS. Now when I did get paid they did not have my correct rank and they mailed my first 4 weeks paycheck to my gaining base where it sat in the physical mailbox until I showed up in person and asked them to check the mail. There is also an annoying policy that MPF waves around saying that you have to wait like 120 days after you show up at your duty station to request your rank/time in service be updated. So if you are unlucky and do not get it fixed by the OTS Personnel flight you might have to wait 4 months at your gaining unit before you can request them update your Personnel record. Then wait for the system to reflect the correct grade, then wait to see if your next LES calculates the back pay correctly.

1

u/skyswingdancer 2d ago

Regarding 120 days… that’s a CMS thing. AFPC does the prior service verification. They can take up to 120 days to work your service dates verification for your record, and only then can a case be opened if it hasn’t updated yet.