Milksheikh

What flight benefits do freight guys get? Let's say you want to do as much traveling in your off time or have family overseas. I believe the airlines give your immediate family and parents free travel/upgrades to first class as well as some give out a certain number of buddy passes a year. At least I think it works like that.. what sort of benefits do cargo outfits have? Genuinely curious as this is a major consideration as to whether go freight or airline.

Swedish Blender

Freight guys get to jumpseat.

If free travel is a major consideration, I'm afraid you will be disappointed. Not saying it's not worth anything (I enjoyed the travel bennies when I had them), but it is space available and the flights are much fuller today than 20 years ago. The fact is, your family will probably want to go to the same places and same time as the general public which means flights will be tight.

Cargo pilots usually have longer blocks of days off to travel without using vacation.

UnusualAttitude

At Purple we have access to interline travel for immediate family. Our priority is very low however. Below all of the carrier airlines active employees, dependents, buddy passes, etc. So it is really only useful if you are very flexible.

The truth is that at least for domestic flying with our discount, it's so cheap now that the amount you are saving is really hardly ever worth the hassle of flying non-rev. When I was a kid you picked the destination and got on the flight. That isn't the case anymore. Now the airlines have modeled capacity to meet demand in such a scientific way that loads are very close to full year around. You can comfortably travel non-rev about 4 months out of the year. Mid. Jan through Feb (excluding MLK, Jr. weekend and President's Day weekend and any time a major snow even occurs) and Sep-Oct (excluding Labor Day weekend). If you have kids, they are in school during those months. Summer non-rev. is a PITA.

As an example we are taking the kids to Disney in September. Comparing the non-rev cost to SWA's published reflects about $50 savings per person. To save $200 (4 of us) I would have to assume responsibility for figuring out how to get home if the flight cancels, etc. Not worth it. I'll just buy tickets.

Flying international is another story. Until the airlines start offering upgrades to status holders on international flights then this is the non-rev holy grail and an amazing benefit that the PAX guys get. At Purple we DH a lot. A whole lot if you want. You collect all of the mileage in your own name. All of the sudden you have positive space first class trip to EU or wherever. Unless you plan on traveling abroad every month (you won't have time for that when you're junior unless you devote yourself to odd scheduling *I'm talking about you Contrails!*) then it is sort of a wash.

Of course you always have access to the world wide network via the Jumpseat. Going to the EU on a 777 whilst sleeping in the bunk (assuming it's a 3 pilot crew) all the way over is not a bad way to travel. Some guys even do this in lieu of a scheduled first class airline DH.

Point is this. Travel benefits can be really awesome at times especially when you are new and your family life if very flexible. Over time you'll use them less and less and then later maybe more and more. When I flew for DL I spent Christmas in CDG. The CA brought along his wife and son. I thought that was awesome. Granted our layover was only 24 hours so it wouldn't have made sense to buy them tickets for such a short vacation. The free travel made it worth it. They did have to fly over the day before in order to get there, our flight was already showing full the following day. I talked to a Purple crew in the hotel lobby who was there for 96 hours. For a 4 day paid vacation in CDG it would probably be worth it to buy some tickets compared to 1 day.

I would certainly compare benefits at different places (healthcare, vacation, retirement) but keep in mind they are only as good as the duration of the current contract and like the cliche statement the only things that stay the same is that everything changes. Many of these will prove to be far more important that non-rev travel over the course of a career in many (not all) cases.

I would not personally base my career on travel benefits but that is just me. Before de-regulation and even into the 90's I would say they were a benefit, now I would call them a perk. YMMV.

-UA

busdriver12

I guess it depends upon how much you want your family to travel. At FedEx, we have large numbers of deadheads, and you can accrue plenty of airmiles over the year. I deadhead enough on Delta that I can give my kids gold medallion status, allowing them to get decent seats and be upgraded every now and then on airmiles tickets. We virtually never buy the kids tickets, but use airmiles for them. Since they're so wishy washy about when/if they're flying somewhere, the airmiles allow us to cancel/reschedule their tickets without penalty. As far as my travel goes, I either have FedEx purchase a ticket in conjunction with a trip or I might jumpseat.

Our scheduled deadheads are a real bonus for a commuter. We save FedEx millions of dollars every month by people living all over the world, and we can get confirmed space tickets to start/end our trips to wherever we like. Now if I wanted to take my family on a trip with me, I couldn't, so that is a negative.

cactusmike

Sadly, you are 100 percent correct. Travel benefits are at the bottom of the list when it comes to being worthwhile for your family. You are also correct on the capacity modeling that's done by revenue management. You can look at a flight 2 days out with 30 open seats and by departure time it is full. I saw a PHX to CLT 0600 departure showing 183 booked, 183 capacity with 38 nonrevs listed. That was going to be 38 disappointed people, rolling over to the next full flight, pushing those next flight non revs further down, and so on. It's a crap shoot without the jumpseat.

Milksheikh

This is all great intel/advice. Thanks for the replies. I won't be making my choice solely on flight benefits it just plays a bigger part for me due to family overseas and having a family that loves to travel. As for the above, is this like what netjets does where they buy your airline ticket to start your trip from your home airport to where they need you?

busdriver12

FedEx will pay for any travel within 3 days of the beginning or end of a trip. Not rental car or cruise boats though.

It is all considered staging/destaging, no matter your destination or departure. However, if you go over your travel bank that month (based upon how many scheduled deadhead tickets you have), you pay them back. I go over and reimburse them often, however, it's by my own doing. And now we can use other months to cover a deficit. Some months they save thousands of dollars off of me getting cheaper deadheads. It really is a win/win scenario for the company and pilots. Last thing they want us to do is Jumpseat into Memphis and take out scheduled deadhead, when we can do a cheaper, less risky flight on our own (we tend to have far more backups than the company, who often will schedule us on the last flight out).

FTFF

UPS is more or less the same. We also have ZEDs on DAL and Lufthansa and at a few other smaller outfits. I use miles or buy tickets the rare time things look tight. But otherwise, so far being at UPS on ZED status (S4 DAL) hasn't made any difference from when I was at my regional with S3C priority in terms of whether or not I got on a particular flight-they just haven't been that tight or they were already oversold where some mainline employees weren't even going to get on. I've done a bunch of flights to Louisville, LAX, and Europe on ZEDS so far and it's not bad at all if you are non REV savvy. No upgrades with ZEDs unfortunately.

DP89

I greatly appreciate it! I'm open to hear any info about any cargo company.

mainlineAF

I have nonrev benefits and just bought 2 tickets for my vacation. I paid way too much for the trip to not get there on time.