Fewer Pilots Ditching Navy to Join Airline Ranks : Military: Bonus program and the thrill of flying high-performance aircraft help to increase retention rate.
During the two years that Navy pilot Lt. John Kuznik has been stationed in San Diego, he has actually been in the city for only nine months. Most of the time he was at sea.
“When you have a house and bills to pay, it’s real inconvenient. Even if you’re not married, it’s real tough,” said Kuznik, 28, who joined the Navy almost six years ago . Following a well-trodden path, Kuznik is now considering signing up with one of the airlines that are actively wooing military pilots. For the Navy, Kuznik represents a decade-old problem of private industry luring away its pilots who have received about $1 million in training.
But for the first time in recent years, the Navy has managed to slow the longtime trend of losing pilots, who can spend as much as 13 years at sea during a 20-year career. By offering yearly bonuses of as much as $12,000 to aviators, the Navy is finally gaining on what has been a losing situation.
In 1981, the Navy started offering bonuses of $6,000 as incentive to pilots, whose ranks were being dramatically thinned by airlines. Last year, that bonus was doubled. The Navy tries to get pilots more flight time, but can’t guarantee it.
“It will allow us to compete. Are we licking the problem? We are looking at it aggressively,” said Capt. Kendell Pease, spokesman of the Military Personnel Command in Washington. “It doesn’t do us any good to train these people and have them go right out the door.”
When a military pilot bails out, his income may initially drop until he gains seniority. Experienced military pilots earn about $45,000 annually, while commercial pilots earn from $25,000 to $140,000.
When the airlines hired almost 8,000 pilots in 1985, more than the industry had hired in any one year before, the Navy’s retention rate dropped to 32%--its lowest in years. Last year, that rate climbed to 38%, which was 4% more than 1987. It’s the first significant upturn in what had been a downward spiral.
In 1990, the Navy was short 1,200 pilots. A year before, it was 1,300 short.
In the Pacific Fleet, where the naval aviators monitor more than 100 million square miles from the U.S. West Coast to Africa’s east coast, the retention rates are better than the Navywide average. In 1989, the retention rate was 62%. Lt. Cmdr. Bob Pritchard, a spokesman, attributed the difference to West Coast leadership, quality of life and flight hours.
“The challenge is you have to find the guy, train him, and keep him--that’s the hardest part of the equation,” said Vice Adm. John H. Fetterman Jr., commander naval aviation in the Pacific. “My greatest concern is erosion of people, officers and enlisted. Once you erode that, it’s an investment that’s hard to re-establish.”
Senior Navy officers are not trying for 100% retention because they want enough turnover to be able to promote new pilots. The official goal is to retain 43%, Pease said.
The Air Force has also been hit hard by the airline industry. Its retention rate dropped from 59% in 1985 to 36% last year, far short of the official goal of 62%.
“For the Air Force, it’s been a serious hemorrhage of pilots,” said Maj. Lou Figueroa, a Washington spokesman.
Most agree that although the bonus has helped, money is not the reason pilots stay in the military. Pilots say they stay because they love flying high-performance aircraft, the challenge of landing on an aircraft carrier pitching in the sea, and the thrill of being catapulted off a ship deck.
And for many military pilots, airliners are dull by comparison.
“I liken flying airliners to bus driving--it’s not really for me,” said Lt. Scott Jacobson, a 30-year-old Rockville, Ill.-native who joined the Navy five years ago and has become a helicopter pilot. “It’s not really exciting flying--they’re bus drivers going from A to B.”
Still others have begun to see how the military life style could wear thin.
Lt. Chris Kalafut, a 24-year-old Oceanside native, is married. He joined the Navy two years ago because he has always wanted to fly off an aircraft carrier.
“This is all new and exciting now but again it’s all new. After seven years, it could be the same old thing,” Kalafut said. “In a few years, my wife and I will have some children, and I’d like to be home more than six months a year.”
Family separation and “geographic widowhood” are among the most common reasons cited by pilots leaving the Navy. For Kalafut, his frequent transfers make it difficult for his wife to embark on a profession.
Kalafut, whose cheeks flush as he describes carrier landings, is not interested in becoming an airline pilot today, but he’s glad that the option is open to him. Right now, the thrill of flying outweighs the inconvenience of the military life style. And he’s more interested in flight hours than flight routes.
In the Air Force, the pilot of an F-15 Eagle fighter jet will have about 15 hours in the cockpit each month. The pilot of a cargo plane gets about 26 hours monthly. The Navy’s Pacific Fleet pilots fly about 21 hours monthly, Pritchard said.
“Instead of giving $10,000, I’d much rather give a guaranteed 25 flight hours a month because these guys love to fly,” said Vice Adm. Fetterman. “They do it because they love it, because they want to be part of the fraternity. You could be corny and say they want to be the ‘Right Stuff.’ ”
