The United States Air Force will be facing a shortage of fighter pilots in about eight years according to a story on Fox News website. The Air Force has started a program of offering a retention bonus of up to $225,000 to encourage pilots to stay on the job.
The Air Force is currently short some two hundred pilots with the shortage expected to grow to seven hundred at the eight year mark. Pilots are retiring citing reasons from war fatigue to having a menial jobs like flying remote drones rather than cockpit experience.
Another reason pilots quit is to take advantage of a boom in commercial airline pilot hiring. Here is an excerpt from Fox News:
Boeing estimates there will be a global need for 460,000 new commercial pilots over the next two decades, which will add to the need to woo the U.S. military’s ace pilots.
The FAA has also raised the qualification requirements for commercial co-pilots from 250 flying hours to 1500, making U.S. military-trained pilots with years of experience even more attractive.
I think a lot of military pilots are frustrated with Obama’s phony sequestration tantrums in which a third of active squadrons are grounded. God knows what a cesspool the military is turning into with this weak-tit of a Commander in Chief running the show.