Originally Posted by
Jetjok
Daniel,
I'm not grumpy... at least I don't feel grumpy. What Gunter is missing, is that the passenger guys, domestically, fly a bunch more ups and downs a day than we do, because their system revolves around them moving people all over the place, while our freight system offers many fewer flights choices a day, and depending on which jet you're on, fewer city-choices, because we don't need to move the jets as much to make money. Mostly into and out of our hubs. So if you're junior at FedEx, you're probably on the 727, flying night hub turns, to cities that the more senior guys don't want to fly to. If you're junior at United, American, Delta, etc, you're probably flying their smallest piece of equipment, to where ever your trips take you. There is much more diversity of flying at FedEx and UPS than there is at the legacy carriers, and as such, seniority again rears it's ugly head, and the junior guys get stuck with the less-than-desirable trips and duty periods. Again, being junior sucks, but let's not forget, that over time, most junior guys become senior, and our company has been rather stable, whereas the passenger airlines have not.
JJ
JJ,
I didn't think Gunter was saying that being junior didn't suck at any carrier, just highlighting some of the differences here vs. other places. Having done both as well, I thought he and others have had pretty fair comments on it. As always, it's up to the individual to decide if this is better than that and whether they want to fly here, but in general I think less is known about QOL here than at the pax airlines. So why not let people know some of the differences? I don't think it's whining, it just is what it is.
There are so many base and fleet options at most major airlines that newhire and very junior pilots are often flying all kinds of equipment besides the smallest plane in the fleet. No matter what you fly, you tend to go wherever the trips take you at a legacy as purity doesn't really exist. Senior or junior, you pretty much see the same cities, the senior just tend to get them on more desirable days of the week and for longer layovers. At FDX you can get senior and go to a desirable spot all month long. The same trip at a legacy carrier could still have a short EWR and ABE layover on the other days. In many respects this helps out the junior because it's worth to all to create solid pairings, so even if you get a RSV trip it's probably not too bad other than the fact it's on a weekend of holiday.
I didn't think any of this was about how to improve stuff, but since you asked I echo Olly's comments. There are cost neutral improvements they could do to things like RSV that would improve junior QOL without 'stealing' from the senior which you seem concerned about. FDX's big advantage over the pax carriers was the ability to move and drop R days pretty easily, but from what I hear/read that's pretty much gone away in recent times. So I'm sure improvements in the RSV area would probably be much appreciated. It might even make fewer people become 'part of the problem'.