Originally Posted by
max8222
I was hired in june 1998, big Union battle, negotiations sucked I was two weeks from getting furloughed. On the back of the 727 every captain telling me to leave and go some where better. Guys in my reserve unit at united got huge raises making $175 an hour in the right seat of a 747, I was making $60 on the panel i think. Now I have been a wide body captain for 13 years and I was hired at the end of the 95-98 hiring spree. Those hired in 95 have been WB captains for 20 years. at united or Delta my peers just made wide body capt a few years ago. Timing and luck is everything.
Glad I stayed and didn't go to Delta as I had interviews the same month. Then things went bad, real bad for the pax carriers for almost 20 years. Now they are doing well, will it continue? Fedex is still making a lot of money, shifting things around to increase profits. We will eventually get a contract. Not everyone will be happy. look on the Delta and United boards, they complain about their new contracts all the time.
A lot of pilots here try to make things better, alot just cry about it and don't do anything but eat at the trough. The worst thing I see now is how fractured we are and some groups are outright ugly and disrespectful to fellow pilots. When I see someone doing it on here I drop to their level so they can see how it can turn the other way.
Lifes full of up and downs, if you worry about all the little things all at once you will be miserable no matter what youdo or where you go.
People stuck with this “I was hired in blah blah blah” mentality truly don’t understand that Fedex is going through a major transformational change in how it thinks and operates. The days of “love to fly airplanes” are gone. The OpEd has serious and legitimate concerns, although he went to Fedex making assumptions about the future, that is on him. The decline in volume is cyclical, it will rebound, that is not the main source of the root problems for the Fedex pilot group going forward. Yes, they over hired, which exacerbates the problem but should correct eventually. This is a short term problem.
The main problems which will affect the pilots most are the shift to moving the package the cheapest way possible vs mostly flying it, AND the loss of the postal volume, which will basically decimate the day sorts, drastically reduce domestic day flying. While I don’t think Fedex will shrink to the size of UPS, I do think it doesn’t take much to read all the information out there, financial disclosures, etc, to clearly see Express will shrink a fair amount. No one saw coming what UPS just did, offer a buyout to the most expensive pilots in order to rightsize the group. Fedex is acting more like the traditional UPS, fear mongering, scare tactics, trying to get people to leave on their own when it simply won’t happen en mass like they want to unless you incentivize people. A major shift in culture is going on, this is not the lost decade, not 1998, not 2000, not cyclical (not counting volume decline which is).
The junior folks at Fedex are faced with a no win situation. Stay and be stagnated for multiple years (length is anyone’s guess), or go to the big 4 after a major hiring wave and be at risk of any sort of downturn in the world (economy, another pandemic, whatever), plus seniority progression will not be anywhere near like someone hired in 2021, 2022 for example. Plus some may not even want to fly pax.
I have multiple friends at Fedex, two very junior, who don’t plan on leaving ‘cause they are too old and are resigned to the fact of being a permanent FO. The common theme amongst all of them: FDX pilot group is highly dysfunctional, very little unity, senior eat the junior for lunch, no cohesiveness, MEC leadership clueless. They say this is the hardest part to swallow. All the Fred non contractual leniency, kindness basically gone. It’s like working for UPS 🙄.
If you are 45 or younger, very tough decision. If older, you might as well ride it out. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side. One thing is clear: the Fred Fedex is gone. There were ups and downs with Fred, good and bad (I would guess mostly good), but the indu bean counter is in charge, with the help of the Atlas butcher, pressured by a board who only cares about money. This is the reality of corporate America, greed, money, profits over anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I am a true capitalist, but I do think the pendulum has swung way too far.
Legitimate concern, tough choice, no win situation. But I will agree, try to be happy even in the worst situations.