Go / No-Go: two second careers on one table · Contrails

Go / No-Go

Go / No-Go Planning bands, not pay scales.

Two second careers. One calendar. Your call.

The airline is not for everyone. Neither is a second climb up somebody else’s ladder. Most pilots leave before twenty, and most of the rest retire as lieutenant colonels or commanders — and the two careers that usually follow are the ones on this table. Nobody at a booth will put them side by side. Drag the year, or let it run.

Years after you leave {{ gYear }}
The ladder againIndustry · GS · consulting
{{ cPay }}
a year, {{ cPayNote }}
{{ cDays }}
days home a year, weekends counted
{{ cFree }}
of them weekdays with nothing following you
The airline seatBig 3 · narrowbody
{{ aPay }}
a year, {{ aPayNote }}
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days home a year, in stretches of three to six
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of them with nothing following you

Plus your pension under both columns. At twenty years an O-5 draws half of high-three basic pay — a little under $5,500 a month before tax on the 2026 table, under $4,400 under BRS with the TSP match on top. It is the floor under either career, not the reason to pick one.

{{ gUpgradeNote }} Industry is the senior program-manager band in the defense sector, which is where most retiring officers land; the airline column is a Big 3 narrowbody scale. Neither is a forecast. Run the clock beneath and Weight & Balance before you weigh a decision on either. SourcesBLS, May 20252026 pay tableHigh-3 and BRSBig 3 scalesDefense PM bandBLS paid vacationPilot retention
The one number Drag it. Planning estimates, not a guarantee.

Seniority is a date. The base, the seat, the schedule and the year you finally hold a line worth holding are all decided by where that date puts you on a list. So the honest unit is not years at an airline. It is years in the left seat before 65 takes the seat back.

Age at hire {{ hireAge }}
Every month you hold is a month of this you do not get back.
Time to the left seat
Upgrade timing is a carrier and fleet question, and it moves. Pick the case you want to test.
The career, drawn
Hired at {{ hireAge }} Upgrade at {{ upgradeAge }} 65
Years in the left seat {{ captainYears }} {{ totalYears }} {{ clockNote }} Run it against every base
These numbers might not be accurate This draws a clean line through a career that will not be clean. Upgrade timing swings with hiring, retirements, fleet and base, a downturn can stall a list for years, and medical certification decides more of these than anyone plans for. Treat it as the shape of the problem rather than a forecast, and run Weight & Balance against real bases before you weigh a decision on it.
Go / No-Go · the working-out

Five questions the application never asks you.

A hiring form wants your hours, your record and your medical. It has no opinion on whether the timing is right, what you are giving up, or where your family ends up living. Work these five first. Three of them are arithmetic and the arithmetic is already done. Two of them are judgment calls, and the Squadron is where those arguments happen.

Not sure the airlines are it at all Then start with the calendar, not the cockpit. Half the month at home — and not in scraps. This is a line holder’s month: those days are yours, and they come in stretches long enough to build something else inside. {{ mHome }} home{{ mStretches }} stretches{{ mRuns }} in a row See the month
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Who is arguing this {{ c.room }}
Why anyone stays after they are hired

Most pilots make this decision once. The number it turns on moves every month afterward: bases open and close, the list shifts under you, contracts get signed. The account is free and it gets you the Squadron and the tools. Everything past that is for the part that keeps moving after you have the job.