Several fighter pilots-to-be have asked what a “typical day” is like for a fighter pilot.  Like many professions, coming up with a “standard” day is difficult.  Every squadron on every base in every command is slightly different.  Each has its own nuances, and all of them cannot possibly be included here.  What follows is a generalized “day in the life of a fighter pilot.”

Here’s the short answer, with a much more detailed explanation to follow.  The full explanation is significantly more complex, as will become apparent.

0230: Arrive at work
0300: Mass Brief
0315: Flight Brief
0500: Step
0600: Takeoff
0715: Land
0830: Debrief
1045: Complete Debrief
1145: Begin Mission Planning for next day
1430: Depart work to ensure crew rest

The Pilot

First, we must define the pilot.  Let’s say he is a first lieutenant (LT), a relatively recent graduate of his basic fighter training course.  He is at his first operational fighter assignment, and he’s done with his upgrades and is now “mission ready,” or a true go-to-war qualified wingman.  The squadron leadership decided to put him in the scheduling shop.  He also has an additional, unofficial duty of “squadron snacko.”

The Day

A typical fighter pilot day revolves around the flying schedule, and the flying schedule very often depends on the sun.  If a squadron is trying to maximize the available flying day, the first sorties may be scheduled to take off only a few minutes after sunrise.  If the squadron is night flying, the first sorties of the day may take off more than an hour after sunset.  Let’s assume that it’s the middle of the summer, it’s a day-flying squadron, and sunrise is about 0530.

Let’s call today Wednesday.  Our young first lieutenant is scheduled to fly a “standard” mission for his squadron.  The precise mission is unimportant, but assuming he’s in an air-to-ground squadron, it may be a four-ship bombing mission with some “red air,” one or two squadron mates pretending to be the enemy.  He’s scheduled to take off at 0600—early, but not unheard of.

The Preparation

The first thing the LT has to do is plan the mission.  Like every good wingman, he talked to his flight lead the day prior (Tuesday) and discussed what the requirements of the mission were going to be.  Once given the direction of the flight lead, he tried to find one of the other pilots in their formation.  Assuming they’re not busy with other tasks (or currently flying another mission), they’ll team together to plan the mission.  The exact process is not important here, but it generally involves generating the mission materials (data cards, electronic files, target photos, things like that) for all the pilots in the mission.  Very complex missions require an immense amount of planning; for very intense missions, it often takes a day or more to plan.  Very benign missions require almost no planning at all.  Some “simple” air-to-air missions can be planned in less than 30 minutes.  Let’s pick a relatively common average and say it took our LT 3 hours to plan the mission.

Once the LT is finished planning and knows he’ll be ready to fly in the morning, he’ll leave for the day.  Current Air Force rules require that single-seat fighter pilots get 12 hours of “crew rest.”  This means that the LT needs to leave work no later than 12 hours before he comes back into work tomorrow, if he wants to fly.

In the morning, our young fighter pilot will go through two briefings.  The first is a Mass Brief, in which the squadron leadership will brief very generic administrative things like the weather and the airfield status.  Everyone who is flying that day will attend the brief.  The LT will then move to his flight brief where they’ll brief the actual mechanics of the sortie.  The Mass Brief in this squadron is scheduled to occur 3 hours prior to take off; in this case, 0300—well before the sun has come up.  In order to gather his materials and make sure he’s ready, our LT decides to show up at 0230.  This means he has to leave work no later than 1430 on Tuesday.

The “Typical” Day

On Wednesday morning our LT beats the rest of the base to work.  He meets his flight lead at 0230 and irons out any last minute questions before the Mass Brief.  The Mass Brief starts at 0300 and lasts for 15 minutes.  The 6 people involved in today’s mission (his own 4-ship and the 2-ship of red air) then go to another room and brief the sortie.  The briefing will cover everything that will happen from the moment they leave the briefing room to the moment they return to debrief.  The briefing will last about an hour and half.  At 0445, the flight lead will wrap up the brief (if he’s good).  That will give the flight members a few minutes to grab a drink, hit the bathroom, and grab their life support gear before they meet at the Operations Desk at 0500, one hour prior to takeoff.  At the Ops Desk they’ll receive any last minute information from the Operations Supervisor at the desk, and then “step” to the aircraft.  At 0520 they will all start engines—not one minute prior nor one minute later.  At 0537, there will be a crisp check-in on the radio:  “Sting Check…” “2,” “3,” “4.”  The flight will taxi to the runway at exactly 0540.  At exactly 0600, give or take a few seconds, the four-ship will take off.

The sortie duration (time from take off to landing) varies depending on the mission.  For this mission, we’ll go with a generic average of 1 hour and 15 minutes, or a 1+15 (since pilots talk in tenths of hours, it will actually be a 1.3).  Because no pilot is ever late, at exactly 0715 our young LT’s wheels will touch down on the runway.  Fifteen minutes later he’ll be back in the chocks in parking, and 15 minutes after that he’ll finally be back in the building.  After turning his life support gear back in and telling maintenance the status of the aircraft, he’ll find his flight lead to establish a debrief time, if one wasn’t set in the initial brief.  It’s now 0745, and the flight lead tells the LT that they’ll start the debrief at 0815.  This gives the LT 30 minutes to gather his mission materials, review his tapes, and grab breakfast (or lunch, more accurately, since he’s probably been awake for 7 hours already).

At exactly 0815, the young LT is already seated in the debrief room with his tapes cued to the spot directed by his flight lead.  Like everything else, debrief times can vary widely.  Some flights are debriefed in less than 5 minutes; others, over a period of days.  For a typical average, let’s use 2.5 hours.  Now our young LT walks out of the debrief at 1045.  Not even lunch time and he’s already got a sortie done; not bad.  Remember, though, that if he’s scheduled to fly again on Thursday with another 0600 takeoff, he needs to leave the squadron in less than 4 hours.  If he needs to spend another 3 hours planning the next day’s sortie, he’s got less than an hour to himself.

Not Done Yet: More Jobs

Besides flying, which you can see has virtually filled the day already, our LT also has a “real job.”  We picked scheduling, but it could have been any one of the multitude of jobs in the squadron:  Stan/Eval, Training, Weapons, Life Support, and Safety are the most common.  In any one of those jobs, our LT may have reports to generate, briefings to give, or other deadlines to meet or products to create.  As a scheduler, after the debrief ended at 1045 our LT may have to build the next day’s schedule, generate reports off of the previous days’ flying, or plan an airspace meeting.

Virtually every fighter pilot has a similar workload, and the workload generally increases with increased rank and responsibility.  That’s why time management and teamwork are vital.  Let’s say our LT does have another flight on Thursday.  He also has a scheduling report due to the squadron commander the same day as well as a briefing on Friday.  He finds the other members of his flight for Thursday and gets them to do the initial planning by themselves; he’ll join them for the last hour or so.  That frees up two hours to work on other things.  Now time management kicks in.  If he’s giving a briefing on Friday, he’s probably not flying, which means he won’t have to mission plan on Thursday.  This means he can use Thursday afternoon to work the briefing and can dedicate his two “free” hours today to writing the report for the commander.  Thanks to the help of his flight mates, he’s able to get his work done.  It’s very likely that he’ll repay the favor next week, when he mission plans for one of them while they get something else done.

The Never-Ending Day

If we carry our scenario a little further, you’ll find the trap that pilots often fall into.  Let’s say on Thursday the brief ends at the same time, 1045.  Our young LT then works on the brief he has to give on Friday.  Let’s say he works on the brief for 6 hours, which isn’t unreasonable.  Assuming he doesn’t stop for lunch (there’s no such thing as a lunch hour in a fighter squadron), he’ll be done at 1645.  He’ll be done just in time to catch the tail end of the 1630 rush—when all the non-flight line people make a bee-line for the base gate.  Importantly, though, many of them (not all), have been at work since 0730, and many (again, not all), took an hour for lunch.  So while the LT is in traffic with people from the rest of the base, our aviator has put in more than 14 hours compared to the non-flyer’s 8 hours.

I don’t mean to imply that fighter pilots work harder than others; I only intend to show that many people don’t understand that pilots do not work “9 to 5” jobs.  Most people think that all pilots do is fly; they can’t comprehend the preparation, execution, or analysis each sortie entails—nor the fact that pilots fly and accomplish other duties.  When they see a guy in the Commissary in a flight suit at 1430, they assume he’s gotten his sortie and he’s done for the day.  They don’t realize he may have just put in a 12 hour day (or more)—and he left work not because he was done with his work, but because he had to leave in order to be legal to fly the next day.  (That’s also why many older officers will take work home.  They’re technically in crew rest, but they can still get work done.)

One More Job

Our young LT’s work is not yet complete, however.  Remember, he had three tasks.  His third and “unofficial” duty is to be the “snacko.”  The snacko is generally the youngest officer in the squadron.  His job is to keep the thirst and hunger of the squadron satisfied by keeping the snack bar stocked.  If the refrigerator is ever empty (or even just out of the commander’s favorite beverage), he’ll bear the wrath of his squadron mates.  While not an intense task, spending a few hours grocery shopping every few days only adds to a pilot’s already busy schedule.

Variables and Flexibility

Most pilots don’t fly every day, though there are times when it does occur.  A working average would probably be 2 to 3 sorties a week.  This is where time management and personal discipline actually show themselves.  For example, our young LT above may have goofed off on Monday and put himself in the position of staying late on Thursday to finish his brief.  With a little foresight he may have been able to work on or finish the brief on Monday.  In addition, on non-fly days pilots often do not have scheduled activities.  This means that they must decide for themselves when to come to work and when to go home.  In general, there is no “0730 show time,” pilots are simply expected to be professional enough to come to work and get their job done.  That doesn’t mean they have to come in at 0300 with the guys flying, but they do need to come in at a reasonable hour and accomplish their work.

The 0600 time was also notional.  It’s entirely possible that a pilot’s duty day might be shifted several hours to one side or the other.  An 1100 take off would make the pilot’s day from 0730 to 1545, which would essentially “fill” the nominal Air Force duty day with just one sortie.  A pilot on that schedule who had the same tasks to accomplish might not leave work until 1930 (if he had a flight the next day) or later.

Again, there are hundreds of variables that were left out for simplicity’s sake.  If a pilot neglects to plan on Friday for a Monday sortie, he may be forced to come in on Sunday to mission plan.  If the sortie had air refueled, the sortie duration may have been a 2.5, which would have backed up the entire day over an hour.  Many operational squadrons “hot pit:”  They land, hook up to fuel lines while the engine is still running, and take off again on a second sortie.  In that case, it might be 4 or 5 hours from the pilot’s first take off until his second landing; using the same example schedule from above, he’ll be done with his debrief at about 1300—meaning he has only an hour and a half before his crew rest runs out for the next day’s sortie.

It is likely that in his first operational year a fighter pilot will experience the gamut:  taking off just after sunrise, landing well after midnight, flying twice a day for a week, or not flying at all for a week.  The “flexibility” (inconsistency sounds negative) of a flying squadron’s schedule is something that it takes many pilots a while to get used to; that is also why it is so difficult to quickly answer the question “What’s a typical fighter pilot’s day?”  The lack of daily routine also sometimes makes it difficult to plan, whether it’s for appointments, exercise, Bible studies, or even dinner with family.  The lack of a constant schedule may be the one constant in a fighter pilot’s flying life.  In some respects, it may well prepare him for the “flexibility” required when deploying and flying in combat.

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