Originally Posted by ElCaribe

Most, not all, of those cases has more to do with foreign government laws. FedEx isn’t allowed to fly inter-Canada revenue flights. That’s why there are lots of Fedex painted 757’s in Canada with a C registry and “operated by” on FedEx painted airplanes.

Originally Posted by vroll1800

Hoping against hope that somehow Amazon will morph into a single carrier operator, and they will be an urchin turned into a prince. Nope, most likely they got themselves into a perpetual whipsaw game.

Originally Posted by Sluggo_63

I think my problem is everybody using "lots" of planes. When you say there are "lots of Fedex (sic) painted 757's in Canada." You really mean "there are eight FedEx painted 757s in Canada." If you think eight is "lots" then so be it.

Same with ASL in Europe. I think there are also eight 737s flying intra-Europe by ASL with a FedEx livery. Again, hardly "lots." In Canada, and it is mostly due to legal prohibitions for flying intra-Canada.

Originally Posted by FXLAX

If FedEx already does infra-Europe flying, what keeps it from doing the intra-Europe flying ASL does right now?

Originally Posted by senecacaptain

"Fly for the carrier with the brand name" or whatever theory...

I used to know a whole bunch of fully retired 20+ year military pilot dudes flying for Baron Aviation (FedEx Cessna Caravans). All age 50+, they flew their Caravan like 3 hours a night/AM, within the state, and were done. usually back in time for breakfast with mama.

Originally Posted by Cujo665

I literally sat and listened to 3 hours of one lawyer after another at ALPA national explaining why they didn't want to mess with the RLA because they have a really good grasp of how to work within it now. Totally BS arguments. The only argument they put forth that did hold some water was that if the unions want modifications to the RLA, that managements will push to modify things their way, and the lawyers are afraid of what could happen.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

There is no legal process.

It would only be possible for the pilots who are ACTUALLY employed by the Prime Air air operations certificate holder to negotiate for scope, and force the elimination or acquisition/merger of all outsourced flying. See the problem? Bezos is way out ahead of you.

Welcome to the brave new world. If you don't like being a whipsawed, outsourced, arms-length temp flying uber driver you should try to get hired by an operator which was around back when there was such a thing as employees, and they could unionize.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

A good retirement gig for someone pulling 50% Colonel pay and full medical does not necessarily equate to a good career for someone who needs to make a living.

Originally Posted by rickair7777

All true but you may be missing something....

Amazon's time goal is actually shorter than overnight, so they pre-position stuff in local warehouses to accommodate more-immediate local delivery (eventually shooting for hours or minutes with small drones). So they can probably get away with most goods being delivered to the warehouse within days, not hours, of the need being identified. They use software to determine which goods need to be where, and when. From what I can see, the software works pretty well... no joke, their data mining allows them to know that you're going to need something before YOU know (statistically speaking). For the relatively small number of items which are truly overnight from somewhere not local, there's always FDX/UPS... as opposed to trying to duplicate nation-wide overnight express functionality for a small % of their sales.

Economy of scale helps them big-time... they do so much volume that what you might think is a one-off or once-in-a-lifetime purchase, is probably actually going out to several other local customers every day, so they can justify stocking a few in the local warehouse.

Also vertical integration would eventually HAVE to run afoul of the trust-busters... big tech has gotten away with a lot because their vision has outpaced what the regulatory/legal system was designed to handle, but it's bound to catch up eventually.

Bezos has single-handedly revolutionized retail, and he's not done yet, so keep your thinking flexible.