Online NewsHour: Pilot Crisis -- November 11, 1997

PILOT SHORTAGE

November 11, 1997

NEWSHOUR TRANSCRIPT

The Air Force is having trouble keeping its pilots. Too much time away from home and uncomfortable travel conditions are discouraging pilots from staying with the military, especially since the private sector offers better salaries and benefits. In response to this report, the NewsHour received many letters from military personnel... click here to read their comments.

A RealAudio version of this segment is available.
NEWSHOUR LINKS:
July 31, 1997:
An Air Force general is blamed for the terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia.
April 17, 1997:
The search for a missing A-10 "Warthog" aircraft.
March 4, 1997:
Is the multi-million dollar F-22, first designed to go against the Soviet Union's best aircraft, is a plane in want of a mission?
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TOM BEARDEN: The Cold War may be over, but the Air Force is busier than ever. While its forces have been cut in half, its commitments worldwide have quadrupled. Transport planes fly troops and equipment to peacekeeping and humanitarian missions around the clock. Fighter pilots are deployed more frequently and for longer periods of time than ever before. All of this activity has a price. Captain Jim Lackey flies mammoth C-5 Galaxies, the largest cargo planes in the Air Force. He loves his job, but he’s had enough.
CAPTAIN JIM LACKEY, U.S. Air Force Pilot: The operational needs that the Air Force is asking me to do now is get beyond what I’m willing to put into the job. Overseas deployments, a long time away from--separated from my wife and family is starting to take its toll.
TOM BEARDEN: Captain Lackey says it’s a very different face from the Air Force he joined nearly 10 years ago.
CAPTAIN JIM LACKEY: I would say probably 50 percent more gone for various deployments and things for operations, and the frequency is the real key issue. I come back. I barely get time to wash my clothes. I’m back into crew rest for another mission going out, and I don’t know when I’m going to be back.
TOM BEARDEN: Katja Lackey is just as tired of it as he is, particularly not knowing when he’s coming home. The Air Force might tell Lackey to be gone for five days and then extend the trip at the last minute, sometimes more than once.
KATJA LACKEY, Pilot Wife: It’s the add-along and tag-alongs that throw you for a loop; that they don’t ever tell you about in the beginning. I mean, I can prepare myself for anything if I know what I’m looking at. But it’s the unknown, it’s the--you maybe go and you maybe won’t--and, you know, golly-y-y--who’s running the show, you know? Is there anybody in charge? And the "maybe’s" and--I just am sick of that.
TOM BEARDEN: Has it threatened your marriage?
CAPTAIN JIM LACKEY: Yes. Yes. I have been gone at times where I really needed to be home .I’ve told my wife months in advance, yes, you will be able to do this, I’ll make sure that you could do this. I’ve had leave canceled. I was told, I’m sorry, you can buck all you want to but you’re going to have to go in and do this job, go in and fly this mission.
TOM BEARDEN: It didn’t used to be that way in the Air Force. During the Cold War the principal mission of the Air Force was to deter the Soviet Union. That meant being on continual nuclear alert. It also meant that Air Force personnel will be assigned to one base for several years, their families settled in, and temporary assignments were limited. But in recent years pilots find themselves away from home much of the time. For example, members of the 94th Fighters Squadron based in Langley, Virginia, had been routinely doing three-month tours away from their families, monitoring the no-fly zone in Iraq. Instead of the comfortable accommodations Air Force personnel are accustomed to, eight Airmen have to share a 30 by 20 tent, with plastic porta-potties instead of plumbing. General Richard Hawley runs the Air Combat Command.
GENERAL RICHARD HAWLEY, Commander, Air Combat Command: Pre-Gulf War we were a garrison Air Force. We either went overseas, we lived in the states, we didn’t do a lot of TDY’s to tents in the desert. But since the Gulf War, that’s changed. We’ve now got about 5,000 people in Southwest Asia, Northwest Asia, living in tents, separated from their families for two, three, four months at a time all the time. That’s a dramatic change in the lifestyle for the Air Force.
TOM BEARDEN: Too dramatic for some. An unprecedented number of pilots who are completing their initial eight-year obligation to the service are opting to get out and turning down thousands of dollars in incentives in the process. Jim Wolfe is the editor of the Air Force Times.
JIM WOLFE, Editor, Air Force Times: If you’ll sign on to stay through the end of your 15th year, they’ll give you right now a $12,000 a year bonus. And that bonus Congress is about to--about to expand to $25,000. Now, the idea is you lock the pilots in. That’s where the Air Force is seeing its problem. Last year, over 60 percent of the pilots who came up on the retention bonus decision took it. This year it’s down around 30 percent.
TOM BEARDEN: There are about 700 pilots facing that decision this year, the most experienced pilots in the Air Force. Taxpayers have about $5 million worth of training invested in each of them. 70 percent of that group has decided to leave the service. One reason cited is the increase in the so-called operational tempo. What it means is that the dramatically smaller Air Force is hard-pressed to keep up with the jobs the government has committed it to do.
GENERAL RICHARD HAWLEY: In the Air Force we’re about half the size that we were eight or nine years ago, but we have about four times the level of commitments around the world that we had in that day. So those things all come together, and they produce a tension in our people’s, an absence from home, stresses on the family, that all come together to cause people to question whether or not they want to make a career out of service to their country.
TOM BEARDEN: Pilots are also leaving because for the first time in several years they have someplace else to go.
JIM WOLFE: There’s an estimate that between the big airlines, the cargo carriers, and other smaller aircraft owners that as many as 14,000 pilots will be hired in the private sector this year. They pay a lot more money than the Air Force does, and so Air Force pilots have an option now. If they’re not happy with the Air Force, they have an option that will actually pay them more.
TOM BEARDEN: Colonel Irv Halter commands the 94th Fighter Squadron.
COLONEL IRV HALTER, Commander, 94th Fighter Squadron: You don’t work nearly as much as we do in the Air Force, probably about half a month, as opposed to, you know, a full sixty-hour work week like we have, and over time it can be much more lucrative. A 747 captain makes at least twice what I do, although he doesn’t have nearly the same responsibilities.
TOM BEARDEN: Former F-15 Pilot David Postoll has just completed training to fly 727's for United Airlines. Besides being away from his family, Postoll said he was frustrated by the tedious patrol missions in the Middle East.
DAVID POSTOLL, Former F-15 Pilot: When we go out to Saudi, Iraq, Northern Iraq, Southern Iraq, we’re just kind of drilling holes in the sky and not really practicing what we’re supposedly doing.
TOM BEARDEN: And becoming less operationally ready as a result?
DAVID POSTOLL: Yes. Without a doubt.
TOM BEARDEN: Postoll says that problem has been exacerbated because the Air Force has reduced the amount of flight training time available to pilots after they come home.
DAVID POSTOLL: To think that--only getting nine to fifteen hours a month that somebody is mission ready to go out there and do what we were getting paid to do is not the way it is. Only getting nine hours a month--there’s times when you’d go out there and you would be so far behind the airplane from a mission standpoint that you would come back and, you know, you’d just be happy to land.
TOM BEARDEN: Even so, Postoll says it would take only a week for everyone to be back to full readiness in an emergency. This is not the first time the Air Force has faced a potential pilot shortage, but it is the first time that some pilots are actually asking not to be promoted so they can get out earlier.
GENERAL RICHARD HAWLEY: It is unprecedented. We’ve never had more than a handful of people right a promotion board and say, "I don’t want to be promoted." I think it’s a signal that we need to honor and we need to understand that these people are sending us a message.
TOM BEARDEN: The message seems to be that some pilots have lost confidence in their leadership. Air Force personnel surveys confirm it.
CAPTAIN JIM LACKEY: I think the senior leadership of the Air Force had no idea and is just coming to realize that this retention problem is coming about. I believe the middle level management knew that it was on the horizon but didn’t want to rock the boat because you don’t want to be the guy who goes to your senior commander and says, look, we can’t do it because we’re burning morale, we’re burning out crews in order to fill these missions.
TOM BEARDEN: The Air Force is launching a number of initiatives to try to retain pilots. Persian Gulf missions have been cut from 90 to 45 days. They’re asking Congress to increase the retention bonus to $25,000. And unit commanders have been ordered to provide air crews with time off to be with their families when they return home. But the Air Force concedes that it will inevitably suffer a decline in readiness as some of their most experienced pilots move on.
Editor's note: Captain Jim Lackey has since left the Air Force to pursue a career as a commercial pilot.
Here are some of the thoughts and comments from the NewsHour's viewing audience. Thanks for writing in!
J. D. Driskell of Fair Oaks Ranch, TX
Sounds to me like the USAF needs "a few good men". I retired from the Navy in 1985 so the C5 pilot's complaining about deployments seemed like whining to me. I will concede that its not the life for everyone, but this is a volunteer force and he had to know coming in what was in store. That's what serving your country means. The story never mentioned how long these deployments were but I got the impression that they were short but frequent. I do agree that I always preferred to one 90 day deployment to 12 one week deployments.
Dana McKinney of Alexandria VA
As a retired Navy carrier pilot, I watched your segment on air force pilot retention with interest. The change in global affairs has forced the USAF to employ expeditionary air power deployment patterns in order to maintain its relevance in the current defense environment.
Gone are the days of garrison life and the pilots are realizing that forward presence means hardship d family separation. I can understand why many of them are leaving. However, it would have been more instructive to offer a comparison of USAF and Navy/USMC pilot situations in order to put the issue in perspective.
During my 28 year career I never made a deployment of less than 6 months, most of them were more than 8 months, and one lasted 11 months. All of them were scheduled to be 6 months long, but the necessity to respond to global crises made forward deployment an uncertain business.
The fact that the USAF is planning to cut deployment lengths from 90 to 45 days in order to boost retention begs the question of whether forward presence is a sustainable concept for a force nurtured in a garrison environment.
Steven Gelles of San Diego, CA
Just saw the article about Air Force pilots complaining about the length of their deployments away from their familys and the conditions they must live under while deployed in the Middle East.
The article was done very well, however, one thing was missing. The comparison of the deployments and living conditions with the other armed forces.
The article stated that the pilots are deployed for 3 months. This is short in comparison with the Navy and Marine Corps team which is deployed for 6 months or more if there is a problem in the area such as Iraq.
Also stated was that 8 men had to share a 20 X 30 tent and use porta-johns. Having only eight people in a "GP Medium Tent" would be luxury accomodations for the Marines and the Navy personnel attached to them. Porta-johns are also a luxury. We have something called a "four holer". Ask your local Marine what one is.
I truly believe that there is a retention problem with Air Force pilots which needs to be addressed, however, the pilots need to look at their sister services and their deployment conditions prior to complaining about their 90 day deployments. We are ALL doing more with less.
Thank you for letting voice my concerns.
Steven Gelles
Hospital Corpsman First Class
US Navy
David Orcutt of Austin, TX

Less than 2 months ago, I resigned my position as a nuclear-trained submarine officer. It was one of the most difficult decisions in my life, as I enjoyed the people and many aspects of the work. However, as in the pilots' case, the Navy simply does not pay enough for most people to justify the extreme impact on their lifestyle and family life.
During my three-year tour onboard a submarine, I consistently worked 80-hour weeks in port and every waking hour when we were at sea. We were at deployed or underway for about 40% of my time onboard. Our annual bonus was $12,000 also, if we would sign a 3-5 year contract after our initial obligation. The Navy only needs about 33% retention of junior officers to fill its submarine department head billets, but since it is having trouble reaching this, even with the declining number of submarines.
Obviously, there is no direct market for sub officers in the civilian world, as there is for pilots, but most of my buddies got out to go to top MBA schools with their experience and training, and do quite well for themselves.
There was an excellent article by a submarine junior officer about why the GenXers were not staying in the sub force in the Navy's magazine, "Proceedings," in case you are interested. Also, I think you would find the higher echelon of Navy submariners much less candid about the problem than the AF 4-star was.
In my experience, and from the many ex-military friends that I have in business school, the military suffers from an inability to keep its good people, that the country paid good money to train, because of many antiquated policies and personnel management policies dating back to WWII. It saddens me because there are so many good people that would dedicate their careers to their country if it showed that it valued their service.


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