thenuge
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult
What do you mean couldn't hack and they weren't up to snuff? Academically or physically not able to perform? Any examples?
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Flight School Attrition
- Thread starter thenuge
- Start date
What do you mean couldn't hack and they weren't up to snuff? Academically or physically not able to perform? Any examples?
Harrier Dude
Living the dream
Don't sweat the attrition rate. As pointed out before, there's quite a bit of fuzzy math here. Work hard, stay calm, and you'll be fine. The screening process seems to be fairly good in making sure you have what it takes to be there. The guys that I saw get booted pretty much all "just quit trying". It seemed fairly obvious that they needed to go. I never saw a guy who busted his butt to learn everything he could get booted, with the one exception of my form partner in primary. He just flat out couldn't "wiggle the sticks" safely. They let him go NFO where he did very well.
Zilch
This...is...Caketown!
From my viewpoint on the front end of things just prior to OCS, this concept seems crazy. To me, it's taken a lot of work just to get as far as the selection process. Add to this OCS, TBS, API, and so on...looks like a full plate, but if it will get me where I want to be, I'll go 'till my limbs fall off and my brain rots.
I guess my question is, how do you get through so many demanding challenges just to "quit trying" before you get winged? Does something change during the process, or was something not right to begin with?
pdx
HSM Pilot
Most of the DORs and attrites I have seen were mostly chumps that didn't belong there in the first place. However, there are always the few that have the motivation, but just don't have the skills.
As far as DORs go, you probably think you have an idea of what Naval Aviation is, but you can't really know until you are there. My ideas and views have changed a lot during primary and advanced, and I'm sure they will change drastically when I get out to the fleet. Some people discover that it just isn't for them.
So, which is better, to gut it out because of pride, or to quit? If a person like that does perservere and earns their wings, all they have gained is a career of doing something they don't really want. I personally can't imagine why a person wouldn't want this job, but it they don't want it, it's better to get out early.
Zilch
This...is...Caketown!
Good call, I never thought of it that way. Is that why you never meet anyone in aviation that doesn't love their job?
I've always just thought it self-evident that flying careers are better than those anchored to the ground. I can't fathom why people are calling me "nuts" or whatnot to go through all the hoops to get flying, which some people say is nuts in itself.
"Gee...the Marines? Are you sure about that? Isn't that...like...hard?"
I hope so.
"Flying in jets? Aren't you scared of, like, crashing or anything?"
No. I should be afraid to drive on the road, however.
Depends on timing and circumstance, as ALWAYS .... back-in-the-day ...
DOR's were getting assigned to the Riverine Force .... Brown Water, Vietnam Navy. Your assignment: make out a will and learn how to shoot straight .... hard core ... many didn't make it home.
Attrites were offered NFO or Black Shoe ... no one got to go "home".
Both. I think for some people, something may indeed change during the process. If you're one of the guys who smoke the program, maybe nothing will ever seem challenging. Other guys can speak to other pipelines, but the jet road is long and very hard at times. Fun as hell too, but there is a source of frustration as well. I compare it to running a marathon; there may well be a time when you hit a wall and feel burned-out, depressed and generally useless. But if you keep running you will do something which gets you excited to be there again. But some guys just decide, "enough." There was a Marine jet draft on shortly before I showed up and at least one guy wanted C-130s, hated jets, and finally had just had enough.
By the time you get to advanced, though, most guys are fairly squared away and want to make it. But some just get low enough grades that they finally make the one mistake which puts them before a review board, it's the straw that breaks the camel's back, and they get washed out. Another reason to get the best grades you can; you WILL screw up and it insulates you from the possible results of a pink sheet (one is common, many will get you in trouble)
Other guys probably shouldn't have been there from the beginning. I remember one guy attriting out of API who just didn't make body fat measurements after 6 months in A-pool. Another guy got too drunk at Seville, wandered off from his buddies and woke up the next morning buck naked on board NAS Pensacola.
Examples? No prob...an SNFO that can't shoot an approach three flights from earning his wings...an SNFO that cleared his pilot to take off with the canopy still up on the runway on his last flight before getting wings...an SNFO that read back his clearance to approach and proceeded to do something COMPLETELY different in a VERY crowded airspace...an SNFO who shows up to his FPC/F and hasn't completed the required charts...an SNFO who tried to shoot a TACAN approach to NPA using Mobile's TACAN station. Almost everyone has that person that they would not want to fly with. Believe me, when you're in the back of a T-39 with no reference as to what is going on up front and you're at 500 feet in terrain with a knucklehead, you start to pucker-up. Not trying to be harsh but some people get way farther into the program than they should. I'm in T-2's now and can tell you that the T-2 syllabus is very unforgiving. If you have a weakness it will be uncovered there and in the past few months it has caught some people that had, perhaps, gotten by.
I got lucky, started after only 8 months.......day two of API, blow my knee out on the cross country course. Time finally finishing API after commissioning, 18 months.
thenuge
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult
That's good. When I was in maintenance, I was always amazed at the level of incompetence in any given shop. There were always just enough people who knew what the hell was going on to be operational. When I was in "A" school it was the same thing, too. Scary.
The attrition rate is pretty sad. What's even more sad is that there are a lot of people who make it through and you just have to look at them and wonder how in the world that happened. What upsets me is what happens to those attritions. Some of them are great guys, even if they do struggle in flight school they would probably be great somewhere else in the Navy. Right now, though, they just get let go. Sad.
On a lighter note, pretty funny DOR story. I had a Coastie buddy who saw all the Navy guys dropping out and becoming civilians. He and his wife were from California and really wanted to be out of Southern Alabama and closer to home. So he decided to DOR and go back to California. Unfortunately the Coast Guard does not have the manpower problems the Navy does, so they let him DOR and then say "Oh, by the way, you now owe us three years on a ship." Unphased, he puts in for a bunch of west coast duties -- anything to get him away from P'cola. Finally his orders arrived. Right now he is serving his beloved Coast Guard in Mobile, AL.
On a lighter note, pretty funny DOR story. I had a Coastie buddy who saw all the Navy guys dropping out and becoming civilians. He and his wife were from California and really wanted to be out of Southern Alabama and closer to home. So he decided to DOR and go back to California. Unfortunately the Coast Guard does not have the manpower problems the Navy does, so they let him DOR and then say "Oh, by the way, you now owe us three years on a ship." Unphased, he puts in for a bunch of west coast duties -- anything to get him away from P'cola. Finally his orders arrived. Right now he is serving his beloved Coast Guard in Mobile, AL.
And THAT, my friends, is what comes out of trying to "game the system."
And sometimes guys make it thru flight school who honestly shouldn't have. I'm in class with one now who literally scares me because of his lack of basic knowledge. And the worst part, he knows he's not very good and it doesn't seem to bother him at all.
