Hey Everyone,

I was curious as to how many hours on average a fixed wing pilot gets a month/year, in the Navy or Marines. Do new/young pilots get many hours or a lot less?

A typical Navy or Marine squadron has twenty aircraft and approximately twice that many pilots. 20% of the aircraft are down for maintenance at any given time. Once a pilot is assigned to a active squadron, they are placed into the flight schedules. They can accumulate anywhere from 20 to 50 hours a month depending on missions, training flights, concurrency flights (maintaining flight status) workups to deploy, etc.

New pilots are intentionaly placed into missions to bring them up to squadron standards and expectations. As they gain experience they are moved into differing roles within the squadron. FNG's always get the crappy jobs at first until another FNG checks in. Its the same everywhere ya go.

Not that I was directly involved with the actual flying while I was in VAH 6...
BUT whether we were on a carrier...or at a NAS..they were constantly flying almost daily..bombing targets...in flight refueling..touch n gos...almost EVERY day it seemed...Not to mention the mechanical aspects..the GREEN shirts were always working on something...depending on circumstances sometimes for looong hours..
Naval avaition is not just about pilots...the whole squadron is involved..FNG either enlisted or Officers were expected to perform as 1 unit...not just officers not just enlisted..
Some learned fast...some learned slow...but they ALL learned together....