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Originally Posted by alphaone  During your career, how does it work when it is decided someone will no longer fly? For instance, did you want to continue flying? |
Some people want to climb the "leadership ladder" to general officer, some don't. Those that do, slide off into staff jobs earlier and longer than others, and if things go well, still come back to fly as Sq commanders and Wing commanders and such. Those adamantly opposed (I just want to fly) usually get stifled so much that they get out at some point because either they didn't get promoted or they didn't want to accept an unwanted non-flying (or sometimes even another flying) position. The hard thing to do is to balance your desire to keep flying, with the "optimal" career path that will let you fly and still get promoted at a rate that will allow a full career (assuming that is what you want).
In my case, I took a staff job at the 12 yr point, just after being promoted to Major. When I first got there, my boss told me I'd "never fly again, you're a staff weenie now." Fortunately my job (HQ level rated (pilot)assignments) kept me in the loop on things going on in the personnel world, and when a "Return to Fly " board came up, I made sure I was available. Boom, back to the cockpit after 18 mo in time to meet the LtCol board.
Then at the 16 year point, I made the decision to take a "career ending" job as an advisor to an ANG unit, rather than follow the advice of a more senior officer to take a Pentagon job and "maybe" get promoted to Col in 5-6 years. I figured that, with luck, I could fly those last 4 years to 20 and then retire. Took another little run in with the personnel guys who really wanted me to go to another staff job at the 18 year point, but I successfully avoided that. When I retired at 20, it was either retire or go staff for good. Fortunately the airlines were hiring, Got hired by the first two I interviewed with, started with SuthernJets 3 weeks after I took off the AF uniform.