Pilot sortie rate?

[ph34rb0t]

I try to roleplay in my campaigns a bit, but could never figure out how many sorties a pilot is supposed to fly per day. So far, I try to aim for three or four sorties per day with at least two hours pause between them for briefing, debriefing and food plus a rest period of six or eight hours, but I don’t know how well that holds up to figures from real air warfare like ODS or OIF.

So what’s a plausible sortie rate during a singleplayer campaign?

(From what I’ve read, the “fly every two hours to keep up squadron morale” feature from the original F4 has been basically deactivated via the config file, right?)

[Eagle-Eye]

I don’t know, but I assume it would highly depend on the theater and mission. E.g. In the current environment of flying over Iraq/Syria, the following situation isn’t too far off the truth, AFAIK.

3-4 hours (at least) to brief
1 hour to get suited up and get to the jet, do exterior preflight checks, strap in, …
30 minutes to get the aircraft ready for taxi, and another 10-20 minutes to the runway
Flying a mission of 6-8 hours
After landing, approximately 30 minutes to shut the aircraft down, get changed/take a shower
1-2 hours of debriefing

So 1 mission takes a total of at least 12 hours, possibly spread over 2 days, as a pilot would have to recover not only from physical, but also mental and emotional fatigue.

Would this be the same in an all-out war that Falcon simulates? I don’t know. Obviously, the flight time might not be as long, but as intel keeps changing, the (de)briefing might be extended, especially when discussing what ifs, and stress factor is a lot higher due to constant threat looming over your head.

[Rainmaker]

In RL, you are talking a max of 1 sortie per day. Whether every day, or other day, would depend on crew rest cycles, amount of aircrew, ops tempo, etc. Unless you have guys flying alert, there really isn’t a reason to have pilots doing more than that. And the days of running hot pit refuels and multiple sorties are going to be reserved for situations that are not really needed when you are talking about current conflicts.

If you are talking BMS, then fly as much as you want. With the save and stop clock feature, you can fly 15 sorties a day if you wanted.

[ph34rb0t]

Thanks, people.

So I’ll stick to 3 or 4 sorties per day in a “hot” conflict. I guess that airplane availability is the limiting factor in real operations anyway due to maintenance and repairs.

[Shadow]

We used to fly until we dropped, 15-18hr sessions were not uncommon. One flight every 1 1/2 hrs or there abouts.

Food, alcohol, nap breaks and back into it. Tag team. People came, people left, the war continued real time.

Well times have changed, now one or two flights and I have to go stick one of those tablets under my tong.
Autopilot is great for piss breaks & the monitor has had to get bigger. The computer seat needs to be sturdier and the volume knob has been turned up a bit.

Now I here “Shad bandit on your six” well that covers a lot more area now then it used to.

Times are still good but just take longer.