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A day in the life of a pilot?

MIDNJAC

is clara ship
pilot
6hrs on cruise I get, but there isn't much else to do on the boat other than fly. IMO the only thing worse than an 18hr work day underway (no crew rest for ships company!) is 2hrs worth of work underway.

Being in a syllabus is painful. I did my Level III in two weeks prior to cruise so my timeline didn't leave a lot of time for studying; I barely had time to prepare briefs. WTI signed me off, I had a day off with the wife and then off I went on long cruise.

Yeah, I had a similar experience prior to cruise as well.......had the last 3-4 days off but spent the previous 2-3 weeks prepping for the checkride, doing the briefing lab, and finishing the last couple big air to air events I had left. Buddy of mine was pretty much in the same boat, though he also had to fit in LSO school and doing our NATOPS unit eval in that time.....so things could have been worse for me I guess :)

Agreed about the 2 hr workday underway......good luck finding something to do in the remaining 14 hours of the day.....
 

armada1651

Hey intern, get me a Campari!
pilot
Yeah, I had a similar experience prior to cruise as well.......had the last 3-4 days off but spent the previous 2-3 weeks prepping for the checkride, doing the briefing lab, and finishing the last couple big air to air events I had left. Buddy of mine was pretty much in the same boat, though he also had to fit in LSO school and doing our NATOPS unit eval in that time.

If I had to do the NATOPS unit eval and Level III check ride immediately prior to getting on the boat for 9 months, I would need to review my suicide prevention GMT very thoroughly...and maybe not take a sidearm in the cockpit to go over the beach.
 
I once got called in on Easter weekend to compile flight hour data in a different format than what we normally used and find some new random metrics because some civilian at NAVAIR decided on a Friday he needed this new P-8 information by Monday morning.
Would have been nice for someone to have a spine and say "no" for you. Them's the breaks I guess.
 

statesman

Shut up woman... get on my horse.
pilot
A lot of the pain I saw VP guys endure was self-inflicted, way too many bosses generating way too much work just to make sure they looked good. Some squadrons it seemed there was a competition to see who got out the door last while a few seemed to do well enough with folks leaving at 1500 at the lastest most of the time when home.

Why do you think I am on my way to HSC? That said, if you're flying for 10-12 hours, its going to be a long day regardless of how much additional bullshit we pile on to make ourselves feel better. Could we save some time by NOT briefing every NATOPS EP for the back end, or having the pilots give a brief every time the need to scratch their nuts? Sure, and I hope someday the community as a whole realizes that.
 

MIDNJAC

is clara ship
pilot
To the OP.......I kind of threw us down a rabbit hole of "how long do I stay at work each day", but the bottom line is that if you are with the right people, you will enjoy it. I spent a lot of time at work....but that was in part because I wanted to be there......and that was because all my friends were there. In just under 32 years on this earth, the best 3 I have had were spent in the ready room as a JO, and the best months of those 3 years were on a steel grey floating prison with 15 family members I never knew I had on a 9 month cruise (well 7 months for me anyway). Hopefully that paints a clearer picture of what I was trying to say. There was no negative connotation intended. You will work a lot of hours because it is a job infinitely more worth doing than anything else I can think of.
 

CommodoreMid

Whateva! I do what I want!
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Why do you think I am on my way to HSC? That said, if you're flying for 10-12 hours, its going to be a long day regardless of how much additional bullshit we pile on to make ourselves feel better. Could we save some time by NOT briefing every NATOPS EP for the back end, or having the pilots give a brief every time the need to scratch their nuts? Sure, and I hope someday the community as a whole realizes that.

That's why my SFF brief is "you have forward, you have mid, you have aft, and you have runner duties, everything IAW NATOPS, any questions?"
 

Chazz Reinhold

New Member
pilot
To the OP: I agree with Pags on flying 2-3 times a week. When you are not flying you're doing some sort of ground job. Most jobs are not really busy or hard but they are "office" jobs which are not what I would describe as a good time. I honestly hate going to the meetings and doing the paperwork but I feel it's worth it based on a few reasons to include: working with really good dudes, decent pay, and incredible benefits. It's a good job but it's not all about flying. Many of the members on this site went to college then straight to Navy flight school and think it's the best job in the world. Remember most of those folks don't really have another career to compare it to. If you just want to be a pilot going the civilian route is expensive but you will just do that....be a pilot.
 

Sam I am

Average looking, not a farmer.
pilot
Contributor
In my time there were several different days...here's a few in no particular order:
1) Fly your ass off days back at the squadron. 2 or 3 day a week fly rate. Unfortunately, that usually meant you were FCF'ing. Which...could suck the life out of you depending on which card, or more importantly, which crew you were part of.
2) Fly your ass off at sea. 4 days a week...Most Epic day of my career: woke up at some ungodly hour and launched right at the ass crack of dawn as the carrier was pulling up next to us. Logged...LOGGED...11.6 hours of VERTREP that day. Amazing day.
3) Fly your ass off at a training command at least 5 days a week...at least...we were flying weekends a lot for cross country flights but here's the run down: a highly sophisticated form of torture in which you watch an endless supply of kids wearing white helmets make the same mistakes in the same order in the same manner. Then you fix them with the same solution...repeat...endlessly. BUT, you're flyin!

With the exception of being between deployments at my first squadron, every fly day was 8-12 hour days depending on the event. I do remember I did three check rides in 1.5 hours once which made for a 5 hour day. Time flys when you're not downing studs. When were at home guard, if you weren't flying, outta the office by 3 pm.

Sprinkle in there: eat lightning, crap thunder, golf, get hammered with the best fuckin' people on the planet, go to SERE, study, study,study some more...in fact that never stops..., look cool, be cool, fly to Air Shows sign auto graphs and take pictures (even we helo guys got a little hero worship now and then) with every shape of human you can imagine, kiss babies, get kissed. CLosest thing you'll ever be to a super hero: A military Pilot at an Air Show on a Military Base. Preferably and Air Force base as they have better golf courses and hotter women.

This one time on cruise, we went a week without a flight...I slept in my rack for 28 hours straight (piss breaks of course and my buds got me some mid rats). I had to get up because my back was about to go out due to excessive rack ops.

Those were the days!
 

jtmedli

Well-Known Member
pilot
A lot of the pain I saw VP guys endure was self-inflicted, way too many bosses generating way too much work just to make sure they looked good. Some squadrons it seemed there was a competition to see who got out the door last while a few seemed to do well enough with folks leaving at 1500 at the lastest most of the time when home.

It's not VP exclusive. I've seen this in the helo community too. The competition to see who can look good by doing arbitrary B.S. and get out the door last by doing the most of it is insane around here.
 

RedBarron2

New Member
To the OP.......I kind of threw us down a rabbit hole of "how long do I stay at work each day", but the bottom line is that if you are with the right people, you will enjoy it. I spent a lot of time at work....but that was in part because I wanted to be there......and that was because all my friends were there. In just under 32 years on this earth, the best 3 I have had were spent in the ready room as a JO, and the best months of those 3 years were on a steel grey floating prison with 15 family members I never knew I had on a 9 month cruise (well 7 months for me anyway). Hopefully that paints a clearer picture of what I was trying to say. There was no negative connotation intended. You will work a lot of hours because it is a job infinitely more worth doing than anything else I can think of.

Do not worry, I don't have a problem working a lot of hours. I grew up on a farm where the hours are consistently 14 hour days, Sunday-Sunday. Obviously the winter is closer to a 40 hour work week. I understand that if you love what you are doing, you'll never work a day in your life. I appreciate all the responses.
 
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