Originally Posted by dfwdavi8r

"Chest pounding" about safety records is like taking personal credit for the winning the loto or the sun rising. Call it luck, fate or whatever you want, UPS has been fortunate thats all. We haven't 'Broken the Code" with anything to do with safety. Do you think that the boys at FDX are any less concerned about safety? I know they aren't. They don't do anything different than we do. Who knows? Maybe they do more. We have just had close calls instead of class ones.

The vast majority of aviation accidents happen to "very" experienced aircrew. Complacency kills, that is one of the few "truisms" in aviation. Your premise that our single pay scale contributes to an overall better safety record could actually be argued the other way. Too long of tooth on any particular equipment might breed a sense of security, over familiarity and eventually complacency.

Hopefully when someone reaches this point in their aviation career (UPS, FDX, ect..) a jet is just another a jet. Boeing, MD, AirBus, it doesn't matter. We all have our preferences. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Skill, training, attitude and operational considerations are what we have under our control. We all come from the same cross section of backgrounds, we are all trained the same way, we all operate in the same challenging environment. So what is the difference? Luck? Fate? Karma? Devinne Intervention?

Whatever it is, I hope it keeps going for all of our sakes. But usually about the time people start taking credit for "outstanding safety records" it turns the other way. Just ask the boys at AA about that.