How long does a typical a helo pilot stay in the Navy?
Will they fly their entire Navy careers and what does this career typically look like nowadays?
Do helo pilots or fixed wings have more individuals going all the way until they are eligible for retirement or is it relatively equal?
If anyone out there can answer these questions, that would be very wonderful.
1. Most pilots will stay until they hit their MSR at 8 years post-wings or FOSx2 (not get selected 2 years in a row. There's a ton of stuff on that here). Those that select for O-4 may stay longer.
2. You will probably not fly the whole time. It is possible to do all flying tours all the way through your DH tour but after that tour pretty much everyone will take a non-flying tour before screening for command. If you select Weapons School out of your first tour you can fly 4 tours in a row (fleet squadron, flying as a WS instructor, Super JO at a fleet squadron, then DH tour). If you go to the FRS/HTs/etc you'll have to do a dissociated sea tour somewhere, which is the bane of the helo community. Since we have a shorter time to train in the FRS we leave shore duty with a couple years-ish remaining on our MSR and get stuck with a 2-year tour filling some billet on a ship. You won't fly and you'll be part of ship's company doing boat-donkey things. Examples include TAO on a carrier, Air Department on a big-deck LHA/LHD, CAG Staff if you can swing it, and a litany of others ranging from desirable to miserable.
VP has a similar pitfall, whereas jet guys spend so long in the FRS they can bail at the end of shore duty still current, and they only have to stay for a dissociated sea tour if they want to stay in.
3. Helo guys (HSC in particular) have the choice to stay or go made for them at a higher rate. You can always choose to leave but not necessarily on your terms, and a huge relative number of people leave their first sea tour knowing that they won't make O-4 and will therefore be forced out once PERS is done sucking them dry.
As for what we do on a daily basis, it will vary by squadron but basically you will spend your days as a fleet JO flying, preparing for flights, doing your ground job, and studying for whatever qual you're in the hopper for next. I was a schedule writer for my first job, so I had 2-3 days a week of doing nothing but cranking out the daily flight schedule then the other days I flew and/or studied. Did my first deployment, came home 7 months later then had to make HAC and get Level 3 qualified. During that 5-month period I managed our JMPS computers, which everyone used for mission planning. Not a very time-consuming job, but I had a lot to do flying-wise to get ready to deploy as a HAC so that's why they put me there.
On my next detachment I was the Operations officer so I was pretty busy, along with tons and tons of flying.
Once we came home, I got the job I was praying that I wouldn't get, Assistant Operations Officer. Nowadays I still fly but mostly instructing new pilots getting ready for their first deployment. The difference is now I spend the majority of my time working on my ground job and when it's time to fly I have to work to get in my flight box and focus on what we're doing. The copilots do all the mission planning and I just make sure they have a good plan, didn't goon anything up too bad then take them out to execute.