• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Resigning Gouge

scoolbubba

Brett327 gargles ballsacks
pilot
Contributor
With you on this from a pure Economics point of view (that was my major after all!) but from a "I'm at a regional and am concerned about my job security" aspect, I am considering it. With that said, I probably won't do it; but I recognize that's an asset of mine I could if I wanted to.



Great question. For as shitty as it is for me, I respect the guy who has set the policy and understand why he has implemented it and the fact that in my impression he has set the expectation straigt and held his standard makes it an easier pill to swallow than counting on it for 2 years then getting denied it. In short. his reasoning is "we are always telling Millington we are short on bodies and are understaffed. If I let people take terminal, then I am sending an inconsistent messages to them."

In my particular scenario, what makes it worse is I am also the only one in the command with a certain qual- I am trying to change that, but getting admin to get a new body sent to the schools I went to has proven less than easy. I'm also under the impression that they won't send a body until my PRD, terminal leave or Skillbridge, so it's not an easy sell to make.

Leave is an entitlement, not a request. At any given point, a command should be able to operate with 8.5% of their people on leave. I wouldn’t care if one is consistent with this kind of blanket policy, that just means they’re consistently wrong.

Take your leave. Drop tues-Thurs leave chits a couple times in a row. When one gets denied, start a paper trail and ask why. It’s literally thousands of bucks this one guy has decided you don’t deserve because he can’t manage his personnel or cares more about perception than reality.

And we wonder why people don’t want to stay in the canoe club run by mutant clowns.
 

Spekkio

He bowls overhand.
Leave is an entitlement, not a request. At any given point, a command should be able to operate with 8.5% of their people on leave. I wouldn’t care if one is consistent with this kind of blanket policy, that just means they’re consistently wrong.
Unfortunately, the CO is not 'wrong' per se:

MILPERSMAN 1050-120 said:
8. Gapping Billets
a. The granting of separation leave may cause some billets to be necessarily gapped, since the needs of the Navy may preclude providing an early relief for a member who is being separated.

b. Commanding officers authorizing separation leave will do so only when the efficiency and readiness of the command will not be unduly impaired during the period of time when the billet will not be filled.
So if he wants to go the 'nuclear option' IG route, he would have to demonstrate that the efficiency and readiness of the command would not be unduly impaired (or that the billet would not have been gapped in the first place had the command communicated to PERS that they needed an earlier fill).

I think a better option would be working a conversation with the detailer to notify them of your intentions and try to workout a plan for filling the billet, asking them to contact the command and explain that they won't reduce (or increase) the total # of billets as a result of personnel taking terminal leave, create a personnel plan in-house to give the CO the warm fuzzy that the world won't fall apart when DanMa goes on terminal. That's unfortunately a lot of legwork he shouldn't have to do, but it's better than compiling a folder of paperwork and running into a brick wall that virtually guarantees that he doesn't get his terminal leave.
 
Last edited:

SlickAg

Registered User
pilot
Thanks everyone. Yeah, we'll see.

My current options for leaving AD are a CJO from an airline that I need to build the ME time for anyway and an application that seems to be progressing through the Air Nat'l Guard well. I am currently overseas so no option to build ME time for me.

  1. Ideal and most unrealistic world: I get approved Skillbridge and build hours and continue pay, start ground school day one I am out.
  2. Slightly more likely than unrealistic: I use terminal to do what I would have used Skillbridge for.
  3. Most likely from what I've seen/been told to expect by my chain of command: No Skillbrige or Terminal approved, have to sell back leave (or use a ton this upcoming year, which I'll be sure to just to mentally compress and put some deposits in the "family" bank). and spend a month doing the ME stuff before starting ground school at the airline, approximately a month after getting back to the states.
Known hurdles I have: 1 wife, 2 kids; need to find a place to live, not really sure where we even want to live. If I do the Air National Guard, I suspect it will be near that base. If in scenario 3, will be gapped a pay check for ~ a month before taking a 50% pay cut with the airline.

Assets: I've saved a ton and am prepared financially to leave; have considered paying for a house outright sans mortgage. Wife open to moving pretty much anywhere, she's willing to work, but limited by the fact that one kid will only be 2 by the time we get back to the US. I expect her current income potential to be limited to under $30k per year. Family in NY and MD.
Concur with renting. Save money, don't lock yourself in.

I'd have a long conversation with your wife and do some expectation management. If your wife is close to her family, I would very highly consider moving to where they're at. You're going to be gone a lot. And not making a ton of money. The war chest will obviously help, and in my opinion military wives are used to their husbands being randomly gone, but I think this could help her out a lot. Especially coming from an overseas tour. If she's not close with her family or for whatever reason it's just not a good idea, possibly consider going back to where your family is.

Being local to your guard unit would be a tremendous help as well, for fairly obvious reasons. If there's a base you can drive to for the regional that's palatable, do that too. If one of these locations is close to a base for a different regional that you find palatable, consider that. Regionals are desperate for bodies. Don't feel loyalty to the one just because you already have a CJO. Don't jump ship willy nilly, but if you worked at airline x for 6 months and then went to airline y it's pretty understandable to explain at a later interview that you didn't need to commute, etc etc.

The road to the majors may not be easy or super quick, and I would have a conversation about that as well. Not trying to scare you or be mean, but you (and of course everyone else doing rotary transitions) should have realistic expectations.
 

RedFive

Well-Known Member
pilot
None
Contributor
Kind of just skimming this, but if you're having such a hard time with your front office/admin, what makes you think the Skipper will approve SkillBridge?
 

SynixMan

HKG Based Artificial Excrement Pilot
pilot
Contributor
I think a lot of you are viewing this through an brown shoe lens. The brief glimpse I've gotten of regular Navy, no terminal is quite common.
 

DocT

Dean of Students
pilot
The ‘no terminal leave’, no skill ridge etc. policy, especially when overseas, is unreal. I understand manning sucks but there’s a huge majority of people transitioning who don’t have a plan nearly as comprehensive as DanMa. It’s your transition and you only get to do it once and it takes lots of time to plan and do right. Once you make the leap your first role on the outside sets your baseline value in the civilian job market and starting low and trying to work your way up is like trying to raise raising a shitty GPA.
 

DocT

Dean of Students
pilot
Ha!

I'm not saying you need to jump straight to McKinsey (cc @ben4prez)... but the road will be more bumpy if you try to work your way up from a low position.

Exactly. I’d even suggest considering an opportunity you know is going to be painful from a QOL perspective but pays well/has a good name just to set the market for the future. You’re only going to be transitioning as LT/Capt Naval Aviator, officer etc. one time. After that you’re only as good as your last role.
 

nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
The ‘no terminal leave’, no skill ridge etc. policy, especially when overseas, is unreal. I understand manning sucks but there’s a huge majority of people transitioning who don’t have a plan nearly as comprehensive as DanMa. It’s your transition and you only get to do it once and it takes lots of time to plan and do right. Once you make the leap your first role on the outside sets your baseline value in the civilian job market and starting low and trying to work your way up is like trying to raise raising a shitty GPA.
It’s a shame they didn’t write SkillBridge such that a CO has to justify a denial to their ISIC, or some other deliberately uncomfortable echelon, using specific reasons. In writing. For each individual denial.

If you’re going to get a pound of flesh like that, there should at least be some admin pain involved.
 

taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
It will be interesting to see how much of nut punch the coronavirus pandemic gives to air travel, and the airlines. The virus seems to be sneaking around the barricades. Maybe Fedex or UPS as first choices.
 
Top