An aviation-only career path could get its first trial in 2018 if the head of Air Mobility Command has his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gen. Carlton Everhart has been gathering feedback from airmen on ways the Air Force can retain much-needed talent in the face of a national pilot shortage. One common theme that stood out, Everhart said, was how pilots wanted to keep flying without being bogged down by additional duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This prompted Everhart to brainstorm an aviation-only career path, where pilots would still have to perform certain non-flying duties but could cut down on some that might be unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat I envision is you come into the military, and after so many years, you say, \u2018Hey instead of getting out, I want to stay in and just fly,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everhart said he\u2019s working with the Air Force on the details and wants to start a pilot program for this initiative within six months, if everything checks out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still in the skeletal stage,\u201d Everhart said. \u201cI need to get after this. If that prevents people from getting out, I\u2019ll take it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Air Force is currently short almost 2,000 pilots \u2014 especially fighter pilots \u2014 and has upped bonuses and incentives to try to compete with the commercial airline industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next four years, about 1,600 mobility pilots will be eligible to separate from the active-duty force, according to Air Mobility Command.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The head of Air Mobility Command said not being able to fly enough is one of the top complaints from pilots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":43301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":67,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,16,26,67],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2954],"class_list":["post-21336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-air-force"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"RRMCEZGCNFHLVK4ALN4EWURMD4","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-air-force\/2017\/12\/29\/new-in-2018-amc-pushes-for-aviation-only-career-track\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n