I am writing this to get some sound boarding and see if my feelings/sentiments are valid.
Myself and my peers graduated flight school (took us four years due to covid) about three years ago. After the MV-22 FRS we got sent to the West Coast and all sat at MAG (headquarters) for about 6 months, at this point we all picked up Captain. After which we were assigned our fleet squadron, many of us once again not flying for several more months. After being in the squadron for two years now, myself and many others are trying to find ways out of the squadron and or drop our wings.
Since flight school, we have averaged roughly 4-hours per month. We have all required flight time waivers every year we have been in the fleet. (Less and 50 hours in a year) This includes the MV-22 grounding for several months. My peer group has never been prioritized, and now the squadron is 75% low hour co-pilots. The plane is constantly breaking and we are unable to effectively gain traction on getting any of these Co-pilots hours. This feels incredibly unsafe and we all feel that we are worse pilots now than we when we finished flight school.
Our peers in other squadrons have received many quals and some peers in other TMS have gone incredibly far and have twice as many hours as us. I would not be surprised when we deploy that we will remain co-pilots and peers from other squadrons will join us as qualed instructors because they got lucky with the squadron they got sent to.
This is all quite demoralizing, I no longer enjoy flying, and being thrown in LLL flights with low currency/proficiency is just short of terrifying. I no longer know if sticking it out for another year to make TAC is worth it. It also doesn't make sense for me to be working 50-60 hour weeks just to receive 5-10 flight hours a month. When I could get a more cush job or which would allow me to pursue something different or even fly Cessnas on the side to build hours.
We are all very unhappy and are at the point of dropping our wings or looking for B-Billets.
What are the consequences of such actions? Are we being overdramatic? I feel like we've tried to make this work, but at what point do you just cut your losses and move on with your life?
Myself and my peers graduated flight school (took us four years due to covid) about three years ago. After the MV-22 FRS we got sent to the West Coast and all sat at MAG (headquarters) for about 6 months, at this point we all picked up Captain. After which we were assigned our fleet squadron, many of us once again not flying for several more months. After being in the squadron for two years now, myself and many others are trying to find ways out of the squadron and or drop our wings.
Since flight school, we have averaged roughly 4-hours per month. We have all required flight time waivers every year we have been in the fleet. (Less and 50 hours in a year) This includes the MV-22 grounding for several months. My peer group has never been prioritized, and now the squadron is 75% low hour co-pilots. The plane is constantly breaking and we are unable to effectively gain traction on getting any of these Co-pilots hours. This feels incredibly unsafe and we all feel that we are worse pilots now than we when we finished flight school.
Our peers in other squadrons have received many quals and some peers in other TMS have gone incredibly far and have twice as many hours as us. I would not be surprised when we deploy that we will remain co-pilots and peers from other squadrons will join us as qualed instructors because they got lucky with the squadron they got sent to.
This is all quite demoralizing, I no longer enjoy flying, and being thrown in LLL flights with low currency/proficiency is just short of terrifying. I no longer know if sticking it out for another year to make TAC is worth it. It also doesn't make sense for me to be working 50-60 hour weeks just to receive 5-10 flight hours a month. When I could get a more cush job or which would allow me to pursue something different or even fly Cessnas on the side to build hours.
We are all very unhappy and are at the point of dropping our wings or looking for B-Billets.
What are the consequences of such actions? Are we being overdramatic? I feel like we've tried to make this work, but at what point do you just cut your losses and move on with your life?
