Personnel Sustainability in the Military and the Correlation with

Civilian Airlines
By: Shelby Clark

Abstract
Introduct The U.S. Military is currently facing one of the largest threats in its history. What is this
ion threat? Russian aggression? Islamic extremism in the Middle East? No, it is a sustainability
issue. The Air Force is short on both pilots and aircraft maintainers. Both of which directly
affect the Militaries capability to combat threats, and defend our country. On the civilian
Maintainer Results
side, the airlines are also experiencing a pilot and maintainer shortage. This poster board is
Air Force maintainers are simply overworked. The
Shocking Numbers designed to show you the link between the personnel shortages in the military and the
military draw down forced the maintainers work
civilian airlines.
force to be cut in half. They were still expected to
2,000 pilots leave the military produce the same results, with a severely limited
annually Pilot Results force. Due to the high work demand, many become
6,000 maintainers leave the Air Force disgruntled and leave for the civilian airlines.
annually The main issue with both career fields is money.
Beginning airline positions do not pay enough.
Therefore eligible pilots pursue different career
fields. This in turn causes the airlines to recruit
military pilots. Air Force pilots will leave the military
as soon as they can to start building seniority in the Discussion
major airlines. Meaning the Air Force is now short on
experienced pilots, and is having a hard time If I were to have conducted the research for this
replacing them project, I would have taken these steps:
Contact Air Force Public Affairs to request data
on forces leaving in the forecasted future.

Interview military pilots, and ask them why they

Methods would leave the Air Force.

Goals
Research reasons military members are
leaving at a rapid pace
Show the correlation between civilian and
military personnel shortages
Research was conducted through articles Interview civilian pilots who are pursuing
written on the topic of aviation personnel alternate means to get to the major airlines
sustainability. Articles written for Air Force
Times were especially helpful for collecting Interview Air Force maintainers, and ask them
data on the military. why they would leave the Air Force
Data collection was conducted by the
authors of their respected articles. I took
their data and analyzed it against my
hypothesis. I then used this information to
Solutions
$ Money $
brain storm several possible solutions to the Rebuild maintainer forces
personnel shortage shortage experienced in