No more contact lense waivers?

[HAL Pilot]

you missed the point. of course i would want autopilot on a transpac. but im sure i dont have to explain to you the differences between flying missions in the military vs. civilian legs. even if someone in my generation had the opportunity to make that kind of money, it wouldnt matter. its not about the money for me. its about what i want to do. sorry if i offended you in some way.

Well now you have offended me....the guy with 20/400 vision who had a blast flying missions in the military as a NFO and is now having a blast flying as a civilian pilot. If I don't put the autopilot on.....how the hell am I supposed to drink my coffee and read my newspaper....let alone watch a movie on my dvd player......

BTW, the opportunity to make big bucks in the airlines is still there. FedEX, ABX and UPS never took the pay cuts and the rest of us still do pretty damn well. We will get what was lost back too.

Until recently (relatively speaking) it was 20/20 uncorrected or NFO. No waivers. There are many NFOs on this board that were caught by that tough standard. You're lucky to even have a chance with less then 20/20. If they change the rules again and tighten the vision standards - tough shit. That's life in the military. You accept it and move on or you get the hell out of the way. Crying about it does no good and as you can see, gets you no sympathy.

 

[joboy_2.0]

Well now you have offended me....the guy with 20/400 vision who had a blast flying missions in the military as a NFO and is now having a blast flying as a civilian pilot. If I don't put the autopilot on.....how the hell am I supposed to drink my coffee and read my newspaper....let alone watch a movie on my dvd player......

Do you have to wear pants while in the cockpit too? I might have to ask them at my interviews...

 

[A4sForever]

Do you have to wear pants while in the cockpit too? I might have to ask them at my interviews...

[contact lens threadjack]
Nope ... no pants ... not a problem.

We frequently flew the freighters sans pants (wore shorts and T-shirts/Polos ... one guy flew in his skivvies, however ) ..... like: why waste a good uniform sweating in a hot freighter on the 120 degree ramps while traversing between Tokyo-Manila-Singapore ????

And once ... I recovered on USS BOAT in a pair of Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers --- that's a very long, sorry, story made short.

I wouldn't bother to bring the pants stuff up in the interview, however ...

[/contact lens threadjack ... OUT]

 

[sundevil_av8r]

yeah the freighters are still making the big bucks. and i hope that doesn't change like it did in the airlines. btw, the coffee/newspaper were friendly stabs at the commercial airlines. after a career in the military who wouldn't want to get paid that kind of money?

back to the waivers... this is a question i am going to ask my recruiter soon but i thought i would just throw it out. since i was NPQ'd for visual acuity, and then got PRK, do I have to wait until the 3 month post-op visit to even apply to the next board? or can i apply to a board around 2 months so that when it takes a month to hear back I am ready for my 3 month post-op and waiver application?

 

[Slammer2]

back to the waivers... this is a question i am going to ask my recruiter soon but i thought i would just throw it out. since i was NPQ'd for visual acuity, and then got PRK, do I have to wait until the 3 month post-op visit to even apply to the next board? or can i apply to a board around 2 months so that when it takes a month to hear back I am ready for my 3 month post-op and waiver application?

you wont get a contract as pilot unless you meet all the requirements. You wont get a SNA contract based on you "most likely" meeting all the requirements. You can apply as a NFO contract just to try to get your slot for OCS and then try to change it to Pilot, but will actually have to do all the post op stuff to get your PRK waiver. So I wouldnt necessarily tell you not to apply, but you wont get the pilot contract until then. Hope that helps.

 

[sundevil_av8r]

so do i have to apply for the waiver and get approved before i reapply to a board? i guess i will just have to talk to my recruiter. he told me that i dont necessarily have to apply again but just send in a letter of reconsideration... or something like that. so i was hoping since they take a while to push the paperwork, that maybe the letter/packet/whatever could be sent in around 2 months... hopefully get a pro rec again, then send in the updated med docs at the three month point. i'm gonna shoot him an email and find out. just wondering if anyone had a similar situation.

 

[Slammer2]

Just realized that you're applying Navy. I do believe its a similar process ("pro req final select" vs "contract and selection"). I'm sorta in the same boat. I contracted as SNFO so I could get my OCS slot. I passed the vision at MEPS some how. My flight physical at Pensacola - I was listed as SNA/SNFO. I got NPQ'd from SNA because of the vision but passed everything else. I am going to get PRK done (hopefully in March) and try to switch contracts before commissioning. It will delay everything until probably another 6 months at least, but worth the wait. If things dont work out, I still have my NFO contract.

 

[wink]

so do i have to apply for the waiver and get approved before i reapply to a board? i guess i will just have to talk to my recruiter. he told me that i dont necessarily have to apply again but just send in a letter of reconsideration... or something like that. so i was hoping since they take a while to push the paperwork, that maybe the letter/packet/whatever could be sent in around 2 months... hopefully get a pro rec again, then send in the updated med docs at the three month point. i'm gonna shoot him an email and find out. just wondering if anyone had a similar situation.

Your waiver goes in to the medical folks on your request for reconsideration. They consider the waiver after all the post op healing. They base the waiver on your post op visual acuity and compete healing without complications. How do you expect them to consider a waiver while the medical case is still incomplete?

 

[sundevil_av8r]

thanks wink. thats what i wanted to know. i just didn't know if it was one packet of info you sent in or if one went to the medical guys and one went back to a board because i was told i "lost" my pro rec.

so then does the letter of reconsideration go to the medical guys and if approved, i get my pro rec back and am a final select? or do i apply to a board again once i hear back on the waiver?

 

[wink]

thanks wink. thats what i wanted to know. i just didn't know if it was one packet of info you sent in or if one went to the medical guys and one went back to a board because i was told i "lost" my pro rec.

so then does the letter of reconsideration go to the medical guys and if approved, i get my pro rec back and am a final select? or do i apply to a board again once i hear back on the waiver?

To be honest I am not absolutely sure since you are a reconsideration, not a reapplication, and the circumstances that require the reconsideration are a bit unusual. The way I expect it will work is you send in a letter of reconsideration with the request for PRK waiver and all the medical records they need to see. The board will look at you again just like the last time and while they are doing that the medical guys are looking at the waiver request. Just like before, pro rec if the board thinks you would be a good guy to have in the ward room and are likely to finish flight training and then final select when the medical, prt, and epsq comes back. If you had already submitted the epsq, medical and prt (fin docs) then the final select should hinge on just the PRK waiver being approved. If the final docs hadn't been submitted before, then you will get the pro rec and be asked to send in the waiver request with your medical later.

 

[kaytr0n]

so after reading through all of this i'm still a little stumped about whether this contact waiver might be enough to convince me that i should jump at the pilot slot that my unit has been dangling in front of me. i had originally planned for swo but took the astb and got pq'ed just in case, so i got offered nfo and took it. now i'm being offered pilot too. the problem is that i'm 20/40 in one eye and 20/80 in the other, which has improved from last year. so my vision is bad enough that i wear contacts but good enough that no prk surgeon wants to touch me. do you guys think they'd turn me down?

 

[Brett327]

so after reading through all of this i'm still a little stumped about whether this contact waiver might be enough to convince me that i should jump at the pilot slot that my unit has been dangling in front of me. i had originally planned for swo but took the astb and got pq'ed just in case, so i got offered nfo and took it. now i'm being offered pilot too. the problem is that i'm 20/40 in one eye and 20/80 in the other, which has improved from last year. so my vision is bad enough that i wear contacts but good enough that no prk surgeon wants to touch me. do you guys think they'd turn me down?

If the contact waiver program has been rescinded then your eyesight will NPQ you for pilot.

Brett

 

[whitesoxnation]

Bad news...

Just found out that I lost my contact lense waiver.

What I heard was that they dont like the program, and that they will look for any exscuse possible to take it away from you.

 

[Brett327]

What I heard was that they dont like the program, and that they will look for any exscuse possible to take it away from you.

That's not exactly how things work at NOMI. If they rescind the waiver, then they don't need an "excuse" to take it away. They have their reasons for adjusting program requirements, so try not to put it in such melodramatic terms.

Brett