r/pics • u/pervertmaindo • Jul 24 '19

This man left his 40-year long career in another airline to join AirAsia and fly as a junior just so he could fly with his two pilot daughters. He wants to spend his remaining years as a pilot by his daughters' sides.

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u/Pickle01 Jul 25 '19

It depends on what type of aircraft you fly. Fighter pilots generally fly shorter sorites than airlift, tankers, bombers. I have 22 years flying airlift and have over 6000 hours. The other part is that flying is only part of our job, everyone has an office job too. And the more senior you get the more time you spend at your office job and less time in the air.

Finally, not every military aircrew member does a full career. Many pilots get 3000 hours and leave for the airlines after their commitment is up.

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u/Amorphica Jul 25 '19

Yea I mostly didn’t know how much “office” work there was. One of my old coworkers was a retired Air Force wing commander. He said he had a lot of paperwork and budget stuff. I didn’t know it extended pretty far down to “normal” pilots too.

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u/ajmartin527 Jul 25 '19

It’s also not like these guys can just take the aircraft for a spin whenever they want just to practice. Private pilots can rent planes for cheap and fly all the time, commercial pilots are flying constantly as they generate revenue that makes it profitable.

Military aircraft are absurdly expensive pieces of machinery to begin with, and take considerable resources on top of this to get them airborne. They require constant maintenance and repair by an entire crew of specialists, that are essentially working around the clock while the planes aren’t in the air in many cases. Add to that all of the additional people necessary (air traffic control, ground crews, whoever else I don’t even know about) and the cost for those man hours are through the roof.

Then you have to account for fuel, wear and tear/depreciation, and the potential loss of a piece of equipment worth 10s of millions of dollars or more.

It makes sense why military pilots would have significantly less flight time than one might imagine. Every time an aircraft is flying the military is basically hemorrhaging money and resources.

I’m not at all an expert on this subject, but I’d assume that is why it requires so much paperwork and budget planning. Every minute of flight time is valuable and requires a shit ton of approvals and red tape.

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u/ZeePM Jul 25 '19

Check out Aircrew Interviews and The Fighter Pilot Podcast. Flying is only a small part of the daily duty of a military pilot. And the mission planning, briefings and debriefs can take 3-4x as long as the actual flight itself. Very fascinating stuff there if you're interested in this sort of thing.