Numbers
Steve: I was in the CG from 1982 - 2002. Things have changed a lot since my heyday but I can give you some numbers to ponder. I was on a ship for 20 months until Mar 84, and started flight training on April Fool's Day of 84 (joke's been on me ever since!) and it took me 14 months to get through. My first CG operational Falcon tour was at Cape Cod and there I averaged about 425 hours per year. High year: 517, low 340. Like 80drvr said, the months vary tremendously depending on numerous factors. My highest month was 79 hours. CG logs flight hours like the other services, from T/O to landing, not block to block, so some carriers allow a conversion factor when applying.
My next tour was as an instructor in the Falcon at the Aviation Training Center in Mobile. There I only averaged 250 hours in the jet per year (5 year tour) and another 200 a year in the back of the simulator (doesn't count for anything). So I gave up some flight time for the opportunity to be a Stan/Eval IP.
Then I got hosed and had to do a staff tour in Wash DC at our headquarters. This was in 1994 and with budget cuts and the scaling back of the Falcon fleet I was one of many Falcon drivers who found out what the "needs of the service" really meant. I was hoping to get another operational tour but we went from 42 Falcons to 17 during that time frame and I was "selected" for a desk job. 4 years of averaging 0.0 hours per year. Some (actually only about 3 billets per airframe) staff jobs include part time flying of about 50 hours per year, but mine wasn't one of them.
My final tour (98-02) was another operational tour and I averaged 375 hours that tour. High year: 510, Low: 330. Each year due to budget constraints our number of flight hours was reduced. Different units often get different amounts of funding (programed flight hours) and so a lot depends on the unit and the aircraft. Also, some guys like to fly alot and volunteer for extra duty/trips, etc, and tend to fly more. I was one of those who never said no to the scheduler and thus was the stick hog for the first 3 years of my last tour. As I started to wind down and get busy with the job search my flight hours tapered off and the young bucks caught me.
Could I have flown C-130s? Not sure. I was offered helos after 4 years as a Falcon IP and asked to extend a year instead (that didn't work out, as I got the staff job anyway a year later). I was never "offered" a C130 transition. Most of the crossover comes from helo bubbas who desparately want to be fixed wing drivers after having sucked seat cushions up certain orifices during horrific night time rescues in really snotty weather. (They badmouth fixed wing their whole career until they get their transition!). There is a formal program for helo drivers to apply for a transition board. Other aircraft swaps typically occur when someone gets orders to a unit (as they get more senior) that has a different aircraft, or the fleet numbers change and one community needs more pilots.
These numbers are OLD, and things change constantly in the CG, so your mileage will certainly vary. Could be more, could be less! Either way, its all in 20! Ungh.
