Ang Pilot Slots

1. Air National Guard Fighter Pilot Slots

The Air National Guard is feeling the pressure of maintaining a full-time pilot force amid a national pilot shortage, according to the chief of the National Guard Bureau.

The Guard is about a couple hundred pilots short when it comes to its full-time positions, Gen. Joseph Lengyel said at an Air Force Association event near Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

In the Air National Guard, full-timers are categorized as either technicians or Active Guard and Reserve, or AGR. Those under the technician umbrella are civil servants and paid on the government scale. The Air Force created the technician slots as a way to train Guardsmen and maintain operational readiness without needing as many people.

The one difference is once an ANG unit hires someone, the unit/state/NGB work accessions and assigning a UPT slot, whereas in the reserves once the unit hires you, a reserve officer accessions recruiter does the accessions piece and also works with your unit getting paperwork in for the centralized AFRC UPT selection board (every 2 months. For the ANG, you apply directly to the unit that you want to fly for. They post these slots when they become available, and you must submit an application and resume as you would for any other job. Only 1 or 2 pilot slots are opened up for each Air National Guard (ANG) unit per year. Air National Guard units can be found in all 50 states, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. The National Guard aviators have been involved in many important roles in American wars and missions since after World War II. Often times, in my experience, guys with little to no flight time are offered Nav slots and the high time guys end up with Pilot slots. This is not always the case, I've seen the reverse too, as the ANG/AFRC typically hires on the 'whole person' concept.

“It would be my choice to turn those [technician slots] into AGR slots,” Lengyel said, which would help fill out the full-time Guard numbers.

The National Guard Bureau is also looking at the same options as the Air Force when it comes to retaining pilots, including improving pilots’ quality of life and possibly even retention bonuses.

But there’s a key difference between the active force and the Guard.

“The only good news for me is you can be an airline pilot and a National Guard pilot” at the same time, he said, referencing how the Air Force is losing active-duty pilots to commercial airlines.

Part-time pilots, however, tend to stay longer than their full-time counterparts.

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Losing battle: Cash, incentives won’t be enough to tackle Air Force pilot crisis

Air National Guard Fighter Pilot Slots

The total Air Force — active, Guard, Reserve — is short about 1,500 pilots, about 1,300 of whom are fighter pilots.