Originally Posted by
C2078
I ask these questions ‘cause I’ve read about these topics and curious about them:
1) You folks mention SEC lines. Is this Fedex building blank lines with dropped trips for training, vacation, conflicts, etc? How does this affect reserves? And how is this a “PBS” style system?
2) What makes your reserve system so bad?
Thank you.
I don't know what you mean by SEC lines. FedEx does build in-based Airport Standby's (the dumbest thing in the airline world, but don't tell FedEx Flight Operations that). There they put Memphis based pilots in hotels in ... Memphis. Why? Because they think they can get you to the airport faster than you otherwise could. When the build these standbys it makes it nearly impossible to drop a regular line trip because of the maximum open time (or unfilled trips) rule.
FedEx has PBS for their Secondary Lines. Secondary Lines are flying lines that are constructed from the leftovers from folks who had a Regular Line but conflicted part of it with vacation, training etc.etc. All of the leftovers or unfilled trips get put into a PBS system and pilots put in their preferences and then are awarded a line ... sometimes comprising of only trips, trips and reserve blocks, or just pure reserve.
Reserve totally sucks at FedEx because every reserve day is a short call out and you must be in Memphis. Yes, there is 24 hour callout at FedEx but the company violates the intent of that and calls you in for multiple hotel standby periods -- so you end up in Memphis anyways. At a legacy, you can sit most of your reserve days at home and can have a beer or other adult beverage of your choice on your reserve days. And FedEx keeps the manning so tight that right now you're going to fly the majority of your reserve days.