I'm just curious, what are currently the most common pilot locations after they finish flight school? Do they tend to stay in florida/ Texas, or do they end up in places like Norfolk and San Diego more commonly? Also, are there any more common international locations to get stationed at? I would really like a chance to live in Italy or Spain during my career ( and or other parts of Europe)
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Most Common Pilot Locations
- Thread starter SWOMan
- Start date
The short answer is that they next go to where the fleet replacement squadrons (and most fleet squadrons themselves) are located. You could surely have the opportunity to live in Europe during your career, but not likely while you're in a squadron tour, but overseas shore duty assignments are plentiful. Japan remains an exception for Navy types…squadrons are based there.
More current folks can add to the above if there are other o'seas opportunities of which I'm unaware, but think community FRS/squadron tour first as the norm.
What about places like Italy? are there no Squadrons based out of there? Would definitely love to do a shore duty somewhere outside of America as well. Is there a place where I can look up potential options to apply for once I am in? I have always wondered how someone places their requests/ looks up what options are available.
No squadron you would go to immediately after flight school is based in Italy, though if you go VP you could have a chance to deploy there. For shore duty there are various staffs that are located there, but your shore assignment is based on needs of the Navy, your performance in you sea tour, and your preferences, in that order.
San Diego, Lemoore CA, Norfolk/VA Beach, Whidbey, Jacksonville, Japan and Guam are it for first-tour duty stations, unless you go to Oklahoma for the E-6. Japan has jets and helos but no Maritime that I know of. Guam is only helos.
Potentially (but certainly no guarantees), by the time you make it to the fleet and finish the FRS, it's possible there might be an opportunity as a helo guy to either be stationed at or deploy from a Med country, Italy being one of them. But the crystal ball is super hazy right now. It will start to clear in another 2 years or so.
Also Hawaii, though I have no idea what aircraft they have, other than helos.
BTW, lots of good info here: https://www.cnatra.navy.mil/training.asp
you can get Japan out of f18's and helos. Not sure about some of the other aircrafts.
CAG Five is in Japan, so you could get stationed out there from any tailhook community. The odds of getting a billet depend on what they happen to need when you're at that point in the FRS. CPRW-2 is going away this month, so one helo squadron (HSM-37) is all the Navy Air homeported in Hawaii.