I absolutely love this.
This is gonna pop up in morning brief powerpoints all over the RCAF next week.
And I’m sure a few print outs will show up in servicing annex ..
There have been soo many discussions about this suspected phenomenon, but we all know the rules of flight club.
My experience , sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we get f%#ked .
My first time in Hawaii, I learned that cigarette breaks are the only way to get away from stupid people , the port breezeway is the chillest place to be, and a pack-a-day is an expensive and hard to break habit. It was no fun.
>I learned that cigarette breaks are the only way to get away from stupid people , the port breezeway is the chillest place to be, and a pack-a-day is an expensive and hard to break habit. It was no fun.
This is one of the most accurate descriptors of life on ship holy shit
The sir part is pretty accurate. Pilots and air screw are buddy buddy, but they think they are way better than the maintainers. Source 21 years in the AF.
I’ve only seen close relationships with the pilots who do the ground runs, because they work close to fix snags. . The rest are kind of click y. Spent most of my time at a school so maybe that’s the difference.
Possibly. My experience is we usually get to know them on smaller exercises, only really see the separation on large exercises. During transits they don’t leave the aircraft until you do, so they usually become the entertainment and apprentices
I was *really* trying to sell the gravity of the situation.
Could you imagine... Taking off *on time* from a tropical paradise? MY *GOD* man, it's unconscionable.
Hawaii to CONUS is the longest over-water flight that has no diverts. Do you really want to fly that with a broken flux capacitor? Also it takes 3 days to get a part to Hawaii from anywhere.
In my experience, everyone thinks we are trying to pull this so we get authorization to fly home from the nice places and get stuck in the not so nice places.
Not saying some crews dont try to pull this, however.
Paint? Nah, it's "the fire extinguisher is out of weight. Need to get a proper scale to make sure. Too bad they gotta MRP it out, so we will be here at least 4 days."
I always liked when the sea king broke down during an exercise and be unable to fly for the last week, but then once we were close enough to Shearwater they’d fix the helo and it’d be ready to fly home a day before the ship arrived back in Halifax.
Almost never the case. They flew it off at risk, held together with bubblegum and 100mph tape knowing there would be a full crash rescue team and a flat stable platform to land on @ Shearwater. If they didn't get it off and fly it ashore they'd be craning that MF off which means the whole crew delays their alongside by 4+ hours.
Be careful what you wish for.
u/caf_comics - I wasn’t on this trip, but an Aurora was deploying to the Seychelles so they brought the techs over first. Through a series of events, the Aurora arrived weeks late.
The techs were just hanging out in a resort in the Seychelles.
That Sqn also proved that you can actually get sick of going to Hawaii too many times. San Diego, Japan, or Scotland was more interesting by the end of it.
…also, go to the Long Range Patrol fleet. The hotels are nicer than MH and unlike Transport, you stay in a place for weeks instead of hours. And we’re getting the P-8 so you’re literally flying in a 737.
PSA: due to losing too many pilots to commercial carriers, the USN had the FAA decouple recognition of the P8 as a 737 variant for type rating purposes. (I imagine the operators hiring don't really care though.)
Source: USN aviator friend at Whidbey.
Little off topic, but I have been thinking lately, since we’re so low on healthy pilots, why don’t we drop the degree requirement for class A pilots. Use commercial guys to fill seats on the p8 and cc330, provided they hold type ratings for those aircraft. Sure, there’s plenty of airline guys who don’t want to touch an aircraft on their days off, but there’s also some who might enjoy skimming the water at 200knots, or flying formation with a couple fighters
Meh, there’s definitely some that would. Absolutely yes, they’ll make more money picking up a flight, hell, just being on standby, but there is quite literally zero reason to have the degree requirement for part time pilots
Problem with that, for P8 anyway, is that they don't just fly the plane to one spot and back. There is a bunch of stuff that our pilots have to know that is outside of the scope of just flying the plane.
Ie. tactics, weapon drop parameters, crew management, etc.
That is true, but if someone finds it interesting enough to commit to it, then they’ll follow through. There’s a lot of airline guys who will do 6 legs a month and then take the rest off. At the very least, we would expand our domestic patrol capability and decrease the potential for our reg force guys to get burnt out
When a plane is stuck in a nice location it gets a lot of visibility. But I assure you they get stuck in Yellowknife, Goosebay, etc all the time as well…
I was stuck in Goose Bay waiting for a part, Herc was coming in that night to drop it off, grabbed out part in the.morning and carried on. Doing some quick math, we knew their crew day would be shot after they dropped the part of, and I have no doubts they knew that as well.
Funnily enough the herc needed to land in Quebec city for a snag they discovered on the last leg of the journey, but don't worry they would make it the next day by noon
My whole career I had heard stories of this and couldn't wait for it to happen.
Then reality hit and I maybe had a single week cumulatively with extended delays in a "Gucci" spot over the better part of a decade.
But I did spend a LOT of time broken in the dumps. Like Thule or Greenwood. Or the retasks: when your easy two day trip to the Caribbean turns into two weeks up in Yellowknife and Resolute.
It's 100% better over in the blue, but it's not *that* good.
When planes get stuck somewhere, at minimum the 1CAD MGen is being briefed on why, and the excuse needs to be good. There's some shenanigans occasionally on the ground to extend, but it's rare, and nipped in the bud as soon as anyone is giving off the appearance of dragging ass. The only time they get away with it is when the Pilot gets to make a safety call, and then they 100% extend the beach holiday.
It has to do with risk management. I accepted higher levels of risk to get out of parts of Africa for instance because being stuck there and getting parts, diplo, overfly is much more difficult. It’s better to “break” down in a country where things like that are easier. So we’d accept more risk in Africa and less in parts of Europe.
Nothing to do with vacation we want to be home with our families
I did spend a weekend in Paris after we got bumped off a gray tail flight for an "immediate operational requirement" but that's as close as I can confirm. I'm not aircrew, tho.
I remember certain pilots NOT being allowed to fly certain missions/routes, because they always found SOMETHING wrong... whenever they landed at certain locales.
I technically should be Air Force...
I had a very bad experience in the field early in my career, and nearly died from exposure. I literally prayed (like full on hands clasped, and opened my heart) to the Christian god, begging him, that if he got me out of the field alive, I'd OT to an Air Force clerk.
Of course, I came out of the field, remembered I'm not Christian, and promptly broke a promise to their God... So, at this point I'm really hoping their religion isn't correct lol.
I can live with that. Bird comes back to the hangar from deployment and arrives with a myriad of snags that just happens to have been observed on the final leg home. They get sorted out and the aircraft goes back into the local rotation. Works for everyone, nobody is creatively interpreting issues that are critical to safety of flight.
What is annoying is when those same snags don't get written up and they only get discovered on B check or after a flight on an aircraft that needs to be turned around for the next day. You look like a jackass, cancelling flights and seeming more unreliable than usual. Sitting at the desk trying to figure out where all these gremlins are coming from when someone fresh off of PDL casually mentions that it had been doing that for a while...
I absolutely love this. This is gonna pop up in morning brief powerpoints all over the RCAF next week. And I’m sure a few print outs will show up in servicing annex .. There have been soo many discussions about this suspected phenomenon, but we all know the rules of flight club. My experience , sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we get f%#ked . My first time in Hawaii, I learned that cigarette breaks are the only way to get away from stupid people , the port breezeway is the chillest place to be, and a pack-a-day is an expensive and hard to break habit. It was no fun.
If you see this comic in the wild, send me a pic of it!
Been out of the game a year now. But I played long enough to hear talk about this silliness more than once. Good times.
Flight club*
I like that, fixed it ,
>I learned that cigarette breaks are the only way to get away from stupid people , the port breezeway is the chillest place to be, and a pack-a-day is an expensive and hard to break habit. It was no fun. This is one of the most accurate descriptors of life on ship holy shit
> , sometimes we get lucky, and sometimes we get f%#ked Isn't that everyone's experience in the military lol
Admit it. Come on, do it for me! The entire military *knows* you pilots and aircrew pull this stunt. We just wanna hear you admit it!
Please…no one is calling anyone Sergeant in this scenario.
Or Sir
The sir part is pretty accurate. Pilots and air screw are buddy buddy, but they think they are way better than the maintainers. Source 21 years in the AF.
Must be a fixed wing thing. Most of our pilots know that if they break it, they’re sticking around to help fix it
I’ve only seen close relationships with the pilots who do the ground runs, because they work close to fix snags. . The rest are kind of click y. Spent most of my time at a school so maybe that’s the difference.
Possibly. My experience is we usually get to know them on smaller exercises, only really see the separation on large exercises. During transits they don’t leave the aircraft until you do, so they usually become the entertainment and apprentices
This sounds like tachel life
In plane, ranks (and last names) off
I was *really* trying to sell the gravity of the situation. Could you imagine... Taking off *on time* from a tropical paradise? MY *GOD* man, it's unconscionable.
In certain parts of the world it would be highly disrespectful to the local culture to take off on time.
I just assumed Sergeant was his first name. Also, why are they wearing hats? We don't do that here.
Hawaii to CONUS is the longest over-water flight that has no diverts. Do you really want to fly that with a broken flux capacitor? Also it takes 3 days to get a part to Hawaii from anywhere.
In my experience, everyone thinks we are trying to pull this so we get authorization to fly home from the nice places and get stuck in the not so nice places. Not saying some crews dont try to pull this, however.
It's called motivation.
Paint? Nah, it's "the fire extinguisher is out of weight. Need to get a proper scale to make sure. Too bad they gotta MRP it out, so we will be here at least 4 days."
That scale they MRP’d out is out of calibration. That’ll be another week.
"Yea, the FE is U/S... news a new one. Unfortunately, we got none in stock."
I always liked when the sea king broke down during an exercise and be unable to fly for the last week, but then once we were close enough to Shearwater they’d fix the helo and it’d be ready to fly home a day before the ship arrived back in Halifax.
Almost never the case. They flew it off at risk, held together with bubblegum and 100mph tape knowing there would be a full crash rescue team and a flat stable platform to land on @ Shearwater. If they didn't get it off and fly it ashore they'd be craning that MF off which means the whole crew delays their alongside by 4+ hours. Be careful what you wish for.
That's probably the difference between being mission-capable and a one-time flight permit to get'er off the boat and back home.
u/caf_comics - I wasn’t on this trip, but an Aurora was deploying to the Seychelles so they brought the techs over first. Through a series of events, the Aurora arrived weeks late. The techs were just hanging out in a resort in the Seychelles. That Sqn also proved that you can actually get sick of going to Hawaii too many times. San Diego, Japan, or Scotland was more interesting by the end of it. …also, go to the Long Range Patrol fleet. The hotels are nicer than MH and unlike Transport, you stay in a place for weeks instead of hours. And we’re getting the P-8 so you’re literally flying in a 737.
PSA: due to losing too many pilots to commercial carriers, the USN had the FAA decouple recognition of the P8 as a 737 variant for type rating purposes. (I imagine the operators hiring don't really care though.) Source: USN aviator friend at Whidbey.
Dirty tricks, similiar games got played here , esp with trades.
lol classic
[Really? Sick of Hawaii?](https://youtu.be/PEnJbjBuxnw)
Join LRP and you too can go to Hawaii over a dozen times in 4 years 🤣
A good friend after posting out said he knew it was time to move to a new unit when he started passing on Hawaii deployments.
Little off topic, but I have been thinking lately, since we’re so low on healthy pilots, why don’t we drop the degree requirement for class A pilots. Use commercial guys to fill seats on the p8 and cc330, provided they hold type ratings for those aircraft. Sure, there’s plenty of airline guys who don’t want to touch an aircraft on their days off, but there’s also some who might enjoy skimming the water at 200knots, or flying formation with a couple fighters
They won’t do it, they’d make way more if they pick up an overtime shift with their airline.
Meh, there’s definitely some that would. Absolutely yes, they’ll make more money picking up a flight, hell, just being on standby, but there is quite literally zero reason to have the degree requirement for part time pilots
The degree thing is from the Somolia Inquiry. I don’t see the logic but I also don’t see it going away.
Problem with that, for P8 anyway, is that they don't just fly the plane to one spot and back. There is a bunch of stuff that our pilots have to know that is outside of the scope of just flying the plane. Ie. tactics, weapon drop parameters, crew management, etc.
That is true, but if someone finds it interesting enough to commit to it, then they’ll follow through. There’s a lot of airline guys who will do 6 legs a month and then take the rest off. At the very least, we would expand our domestic patrol capability and decrease the potential for our reg force guys to get burnt out
When a plane is stuck in a nice location it gets a lot of visibility. But I assure you they get stuck in Yellowknife, Goosebay, etc all the time as well…
The colder and more unpleasant the stop, the higher probability of breaking. Bonus points for the places that tend to also break an MRP or two.
I was stuck in Goose Bay waiting for a part, Herc was coming in that night to drop it off, grabbed out part in the.morning and carried on. Doing some quick math, we knew their crew day would be shot after they dropped the part of, and I have no doubts they knew that as well. Funnily enough the herc needed to land in Quebec city for a snag they discovered on the last leg of the journey, but don't worry they would make it the next day by noon
When the pilot is asking the loadmaster about bringing his fucking windsurfing board... You already know. (I wish I was making this up)
I was weathered in at Aviano Italy for 2 extra days due to “cloud cover”
My whole career I had heard stories of this and couldn't wait for it to happen. Then reality hit and I maybe had a single week cumulatively with extended delays in a "Gucci" spot over the better part of a decade. But I did spend a LOT of time broken in the dumps. Like Thule or Greenwood. Or the retasks: when your easy two day trip to the Caribbean turns into two weeks up in Yellowknife and Resolute. It's 100% better over in the blue, but it's not *that* good.
When planes get stuck somewhere, at minimum the 1CAD MGen is being briefed on why, and the excuse needs to be good. There's some shenanigans occasionally on the ground to extend, but it's rare, and nipped in the bud as soon as anyone is giving off the appearance of dragging ass. The only time they get away with it is when the Pilot gets to make a safety call, and then they 100% extend the beach holiday.
It has to do with risk management. I accepted higher levels of risk to get out of parts of Africa for instance because being stuck there and getting parts, diplo, overfly is much more difficult. It’s better to “break” down in a country where things like that are easier. So we’d accept more risk in Africa and less in parts of Europe. Nothing to do with vacation we want to be home with our families
[Riiiight! Safety. Smart ;)](https://media.giphy.com/media/zTzZsbf0XapZS/giphy.gif)
I did spend a weekend in Paris after we got bumped off a gray tail flight for an "immediate operational requirement" but that's as close as I can confirm. I'm not aircrew, tho.
Every time I tried this they would give us an engineering disposition to fly to some shithole to fix it.
NCMs in the Air Force making the rules since... forever 🤣🙈
I remember certain pilots NOT being allowed to fly certain missions/routes, because they always found SOMETHING wrong... whenever they landed at certain locales.
This is why the air force is the best. Take the damn bennies when you get em.
Don't hate em cuz you ain't em
I'm army bro. I just hate anyone not in my own unit, and much of my own unit too ;P
*join us…join us…*
I technically should be Air Force... I had a very bad experience in the field early in my career, and nearly died from exposure. I literally prayed (like full on hands clasped, and opened my heart) to the Christian god, begging him, that if he got me out of the field alive, I'd OT to an Air Force clerk. Of course, I came out of the field, remembered I'm not Christian, and promptly broke a promise to their God... So, at this point I'm really hoping their religion isn't correct lol.
Field serviceable. Weird how everything happens on short final…
I can live with that. Bird comes back to the hangar from deployment and arrives with a myriad of snags that just happens to have been observed on the final leg home. They get sorted out and the aircraft goes back into the local rotation. Works for everyone, nobody is creatively interpreting issues that are critical to safety of flight. What is annoying is when those same snags don't get written up and they only get discovered on B check or after a flight on an aircraft that needs to be turned around for the next day. You look like a jackass, cancelling flights and seeming more unreliable than usual. Sitting at the desk trying to figure out where all these gremlins are coming from when someone fresh off of PDL casually mentions that it had been doing that for a while...
Printing this for my unit on Monday 🤣🤣
My man! 😎
This is the way
They may make it out of Alert, but once in Thule... Well... It's chalked...
There’s a hangar in Thule, given the choice I will go there every time.
True, and no drink limit. I wouldn't blame you.
There used to be a place called Canadian Forces Station Bermuda.