Originally Posted by
busdriver12
I think they overhired, big time. Most people are hanging on till age 65 or the Dec 31st before they age out. Most seat positions are not doing AVA in December, even on Dec 24th. Never seen that happen before. Next month we are out of peak, and will be even more over staffed. People are concerned about 4a2b (or I guess it’s 4a2c) coming back. I’m kind of alarmed.
I don’t know about staffing, but this is from the last SIG notes:
January 2020 fleetwide credit and block are almost exactly the same as January 2019. Over the past two years, we have seen those numbers increase approximately 6-9%. There are large decreases in the MD-11, A300 and 757 flying. Those decreases are matched by increases in the 767 and 777. The Company requested Target Bid-Line Guarantees (BLGs) match those changes in fleet allocation, higher in the 767 and 777, lower in the other aircraft.
Originally Posted by
magic rat
Can someone riddle me this one?
First of all, when the economy started deteriorating a year ago in Europe and we were hopeful for trade deals as we went in the fiscal year, we expressed to you and the June analyst call,
we began to put constraints on pilot hiring and we have not been hiring pilots for some time now. On an attrition basis, I believe, Don and Greg Hall, our Head of Air Operations told me that we will have a net reduction of several hundred pilots next year, just due to retirement and of course that corresponds to the flight hour reduction.
-John Smith, CEO Freight-side
If you read the rest of his answer to this two part question, he says, “In terms of female pilots, FedEx had been a leader in this. This has been something that's been a project of mine for a long time, female and minority pilots we percentage-wise at one point
I'm far away from the Express business, this level of details, at one time we had the highest percentage of both. I'm sure that's different now, but we work very hard, and we participate in female and minority hiring longer term.
We are among the prize jobs in the aviation industry, and we do not have any problems hiring aviators today, but in the future with the military releasing, so few of them, that may be a different story, but Greg has done a great job for Don developing Grow Your Own Pilot Program. So, we put a lot of thought in this. Our pilot attrition is going down, and so we anticipated this. Raj, Don you want to say…”
He admits he is far away from the level of detail in Express. So it just may be that he is not fully informed in this regard.
But he didn’t answer the question, that is if the reduction of flight hours is due to pilot retirements. That would imply that FedEx is understaffed and not able to hire pilots, which is not the case, at this time. I’m encouraged though by his admitting that that may not be the case in the future. Although I think he falsely attributes that by his perception that it’s only due to a reduction in military pilots.