Military officials plan to meet with airline executives next month to find ways to prevent the exodus of too many military-trained pilots to civilian jobs — and one option may be to impose a “stop-loss” order that would force pilots to stay, Air Force Gen. Carlton Everhart, chief of the Air Mobility Command, told a Roll Call reporter. Everhart said he and other U.S. Air Force generals will join representatives of the other armed services in a meeting with U.S. airline executives May 18 at Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland, to discuss the issue.
Other aviation specialties, including maintenance workers and air traffic controllers, also are seeing an increase in military workers leaving for civilian jobs. The reasons they leave are not always for more money, according to Roll Call. In surveys about their career-path choices, pilots list money as less important than factors such as an imbalance between work and family life and too much time spent on administrative tasks. Pilots also say they don’t fly enough. “If you look at the projections I’ve seen, I think this is going to be a problem for a while,” Gen. Everhart told Roll Call. “Ten, 15, 20 years from now.”
