Originally Posted by
King Julian
Thank you so very much for this detailed reply, really great info!
If you've got some more typing left:
What proportion of 777 trips are 12-14 day 'round-the-world types? Any other schedule patterns that are common?
How easy is it too get long stretches of days off to balance out being gone from home almost half a month?
As it has turned out, nearly everyone I know is in the pax hauling business. Details about life on the freighter side of the industry are somewhat mysterious. Thank you again for adding some color for me.
Things can vary, but I'd say they'll only get better. We're getting 7 more 777s this year and have orders to bring our total up from the low 40's to 55 aircraft over the next few years.
For July (in the FO seat), 22% of the lines are single trip lines (16% FO and 6% RFO). They range from 10 days on (18 days off) with 74-79 hours of pay to 14 days on (14 days off) with 84-87 hours of pay.
Obviously, with those lines, you get the rest of the month off. Fly at the beginning of June and then at the end of July and you string a months worth of days off together without using vacation. However, I don't mean to imply those single trip lines are necessarily the most popular. They obviously have their merits, but don't appeal to everyone. It's not difficult to get single departure FO trips as a junior pilot as long as you don't mind multi-leg duty periods and (if any) domestic front/back deadheads. It's also relatively easy to get single departure RFO trips without deadheads, but those usually are more popular than FO trips.
After that, the majority of the bid pack is two trip schedules. One tiny 2-day and an 8 or 10 day all the way up to an even split of 5/5, 4/6, 5/7, etc. Generally speaking, we're talking varying levels of really, really good. There are some suck trips, but when you compare them to what the domestic guys are doing, it's really amazing that FedEx gets anyone to fly that stuff. Really cherry RFO trips can pay up to 10 hours a day and involve one revenue leg from HKG to MEM.
If you can deal with getting your schedule late in the month, maybe being on reserve a bit longer than your domestic bros, there really is no better job than 777 FO.