Ask a Naval Aircrewman

[Haasino]

Originally Posted by tyler_____

One more question, how's the travel for an aircrewman? I mean I know you fly all over the place, but do you get to sightsee and whatnot?

If you end up AWO, AWV, or AWF on a P-3 or P-8, you're going to travel a lot and learn to carpe per diem, lol. We don't deploy on ships and sleep in racks... we go to foreign air bases, always on per diem, and stay in hotels. Sometimes a mission might take you to South America for a short period, or a longer deployment could put you in Italy, Australia, Japan, S. Korea, Bahrain, etc. Some of the best per diem locations will net you over $100/day in addition to flight pay, and your base pay + whatever allowances you have for family, etc. My instructor is an AWO2 SS1, and on his last 3 month deployment to Sigonella, Italy, he flew his wife out twice and met her in Rome for a weekend... and he still came back with a lot of $$ in his bank account. We don't do a lot of tertiary BS... we don't stand watches, we don't field day/clean the hangers, and we don't work too much overtime because we're required to get 8hrs of sleep a night when on a flight schedule. As an AWO especially, you're gonna pre-mission brief... fly... debrief... work out... and then probably sight-see or sleep if deployed; depends on where you are, what type of missions you're flying, and how long you've been there.

P-3s also break... sometimes at convenient times. You may land in Ireland on your way to a NATO deployment in the Netherlands and your engine breaks; guess who spends almost a week pub-crawling in Dublin while they fly out a new engine and a crew to replace it? The pilots, TACCO, and Aircrew!