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Ready For Takeoff - Turn Your Aviation Passion Into A Career

The Ready For Takeoff podcast will help you transform your aviation passion into an aviation career. Every week we bring you instruction and interviews with top aviators in their field who reveal their flight path to an exciting career in the skies.
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Ready For Takeoff - Turn Your Aviation Passion Into A Career
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Now displaying: September, 2022
Sep 19, 2022

Enlisted airmen who work in some of the Air Force's most difficult jobs will receive from $900 to $5,400 less annually beginning next month as the service faces financial challenges that affect the ranks.

Hundreds of service members will see cuts to their Special Duty Assignment Pay, known as SDAP, in fiscal 2023 -- which starts Oct. 1. Those monthly payments, ranging from $75 to $450, were an extra incentive "to compensate enlisted service members who serve in duties which are extremely difficult," according to budget documents.

"The Air Force saw an overall reduction of over $3 million to the FY23 SDAP budget based on fiscal constraints," service spokeswoman Laurel Falls told Military.com. "Due to the reduced funding levels, SDAP rates for 44 functional communities saw reductions."

In the fiscal 2023 budget, the Air Force is asking the federal government for 30,845 airmen to receive the more than $90.2 million worth of Special Duty Assignment Pay.

It's a lower figure than the last two years, being cut by $1.5 million and around 500 airmen, according to budget documents.

For 2022, the Air Force asked for 31,334 airmen to receive $91.7 million; in 2021, the service asked for 30,967 airmen to receive $90.8 million in Special Duty Assignment Pay.

The Air Force is facing a $3 million shortfall to the Special Duty Assignment Budget for 2023, according to the service. Air Force Headquarters held a meeting this past November to address the problem prior to crafting the 2023 budget, Falls told Military.com.

To avoid the cuts, lawmakers would have to reinstate the Special Duty Assignment Pay difference in the 2023 budget proposal before it's approved by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. The military's annual budget could be finalized later this year.

Dozens of Air Force career fields will be affected by the cut to Special Assignment Duty Pay. One of those is recruiters.

Air Force Recruiting Service recruiters are set to lose their $75 in special duty pay each month for fiscal 2023, which would add up to nearly $900 a year in lost wages.

Losing the pay could be a blow to recruiters' morale as they face difficult challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, economic inflation and a shifting workforce. Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, the head of the Air Force Recruiting Service, promised recruiters he would push for the extra pay to be reinstated in the next fiscal year.

The general "recognizes the unique challenges Air Force recruiters and their families experience and he is working to have the monthly $75 payment restored in the future," spokesman Randy Martin told Military.com

Here's a list of all the Air Force's special duty pay that would be reduced in fiscal 2023, according to budget documents:

  • Recruiters
  • Basic Military Training instructors
  • Human Intelligence debriefers
  • Combat Controllers
  • Pararescue operators
  • Command chief master sergeants
  • First sergeants
  • Defense Attaché Office (DAO) liaisons
  • Nuclear Enterprise airmen
  • Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) agents
  • Air Traffic Control (ATC) supervisors
  • Postal and National Defense Advisory Commission (NDAC) enablers
  • Tactical Air Command and Control Party (TACP) operators
  • Enlisted pilots and weapons directors
  • Parachute instructors and those with test parachute program
  • Flight attendants
  • Mission system specialists
  • Load masters
  • USAF Honor Guards
  • Special Reconnaissance operators
  • Phoenix Raven Security Forces defenders
  • Forward Area Refueling Point enablers
  • Flying crew chiefs
  • Defense couriers
  • Airmen who support various commands
  • Enlisted airmen who work with special government agencies
  • Public affairs airmen assigned to recruiting squadrons
  • Air transportation airmen
  • Airmen assigned to special classified Air Force projects.

PJ Roy Benavides:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/i3nncd4sxaM

Combat Controller John Chapman

Sep 19, 2022

Enlisted airmen who work in some of the Air Force's most difficult jobs will receive from $900 to $5,400 less annually beginning next month as the service faces financial challenges that affect the ranks.

Hundreds of service members will see cuts to their Special Duty Assignment Pay, known as SDAP, in fiscal 2023 -- which starts Oct. 1. Those monthly payments, ranging from $75 to $450, were an extra incentive "to compensate enlisted service members who serve in duties which are extremely difficult," according to budget documents.

"The Air Force saw an overall reduction of over $3 million to the FY23 SDAP budget based on fiscal constraints," service spokeswoman Laurel Falls told Military.com. "Due to the reduced funding levels, SDAP rates for 44 functional communities saw reductions."

In the fiscal 2023 budget, the Air Force is asking the federal government for 30,845 airmen to receive the more than $90.2 million worth of Special Duty Assignment Pay.

It's a lower figure than the last two years, being cut by $1.5 million and around 500 airmen, according to budget documents.

For 2022, the Air Force asked for 31,334 airmen to receive $91.7 million; in 2021, the service asked for 30,967 airmen to receive $90.8 million in Special Duty Assignment Pay.

The Air Force is facing a $3 million shortfall to the Special Duty Assignment Budget for 2023, according to the service. Air Force Headquarters held a meeting this past November to address the problem prior to crafting the 2023 budget, Falls told Military.com.

To avoid the cuts, lawmakers would have to reinstate the Special Duty Assignment Pay difference in the 2023 budget proposal before it's approved by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden. The military's annual budget could be finalized later this year.

Dozens of Air Force career fields will be affected by the cut to Special Assignment Duty Pay. One of those is recruiters.

Air Force Recruiting Service recruiters are set to lose their $75 in special duty pay each month for fiscal 2023, which would add up to nearly $900 a year in lost wages.

Losing the pay could be a blow to recruiters' morale as they face difficult challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, economic inflation and a shifting workforce. Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas, the head of the Air Force Recruiting Service, promised recruiters he would push for the extra pay to be reinstated in the next fiscal year.

The general "recognizes the unique challenges Air Force recruiters and their families experience and he is working to have the monthly $75 payment restored in the future," spokesman Randy Martin told Military.com

Here's a list of all the Air Force's special duty pay that would be reduced in fiscal 2023, according to budget documents:

  • Recruiters
  • Basic Military Training instructors
  • Human Intelligence debriefers
  • Combat Controllers
  • Pararescue operators
  • Command chief master sergeants
  • First sergeants
  • Defense Attaché Office (DAO) liaisons
  • Nuclear Enterprise airmen
  • Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) agents
  • Air Traffic Control (ATC) supervisors
  • Postal and National Defense Advisory Commission (NDAC) enablers
  • Tactical Air Command and Control Party (TACP) operators
  • Enlisted pilots and weapons directors
  • Parachute instructors and those with test parachute program
  • Flight attendants
  • Mission system specialists
  • Load masters
  • USAF Honor Guards
  • Special Reconnaissance operators
  • Phoenix Raven Security Forces defenders
  • Forward Area Refueling Point enablers
  • Flying crew chiefs
  • Defense couriers
  • Airmen who support various commands
  • Enlisted airmen who work with special government agencies
  • Public affairs airmen assigned to recruiting squadrons
  • Air transportation airmen
  • Airmen assigned to special classified Air Force projects.

PJ Roy Benavides:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/i3nncd4sxaM

Combat Controller John Chapman

Sep 12, 2022

The minimum age to obtain an Airline Transport Pilot certificate is 23, which means that it is possible that new airline pilots were as young as two years old when the attacks of September 11, 2001 occurred. The world changed forever on that day, and it's worth looking back at the airline industry before, during and after the attacks.

Although Secretary Rice stated that no one could have foreseen such an attack, in my Doctoral dissertation I documented 13 attempts to fly aircraft into buildings as terrorist attacks prior to the attack on the World Trade Center.

Prior to the attacks, the airline industry had a cavalier attitude toward hijackings. Instructions to pilots were to "comply".

After the attacks, flight crews were operating by the seat of their pants. Until the implementing of fortified cockpit doors, pilots improvised on securing cockpit doors. It was easier for inward-opening doors, but everyone was resourceful.

Finally, fortified doors were installed, but it was clear to everyone that secondary barriers were required, and they still have not been mandated. Ellen Saracini, widow of United Airlines pilot Victor Saracini, has been advocating for secondary barriers for over 20 years.

https://youtu.be/zV3iLanISlw

The Federal Flight Deck Officer Program allowed armed pilots to occupy airline cockpits.

As an interim measure, some pilots were armed with tasers.

In the past nine months, 81 known terrorists have been apprehended at the southern border.

Sep 5, 2022

Art Ziccardi learned to fly as a teenager after participating in Civil Air Patrol for four years. He attended an aviation college and accumulated thousands of hours as a SFI while there. He later obtained a Master's Degree and held several jobs in aviation until getting hired by United Airlines in 1969.

During the airline downturn he was 4 pilots from the bottom of the seniority list during the extended United pilot furlough, and when he retired at age 60 he was 4 pilots from the top of the seniority list.

After retiring from United he was a B777 flight instructor at Cathay Pacific and a B777 pilot for Jet Airways in India.

He is now an author, and has published the first of many aviation-themed novels.

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