FedEx hubs
 

Hello,

Do any of you FDX pilots know if there are enough flights out of the Fort Worth and Newark "hubs" for a new hire be able to originate trips from there?

Thanks

NO...........

Not even close. First, you have to have enough seniority to outbid the people who live there. Second, you have to have enough to outbid the people who don't live there but just want to fly double deadheads to avoid Memphis. If flying out of your home airport is that important to you, move to Memphis. Or Anchorage, of course.

Newark and DFW have enough flights to easily commute to work. As noted in earlier post, it (usually) will take awhile to hold flying that layover in your home town. Good luck.

There are a few deadheads to the west coast (OAK, LAX, etc.) that allow you to deviate and "begin" your trip in Dallas on a deadhead. Of course, American will charge you a little extra to drop the leg from MEM-DFW, which you will have to pay out of your own pocket.

There are two night flights to MEM from commuting purposes, and I think two during the day as well.

Of course, as more and more of you new hires want to commute from DFW, the competition for seats may make commuting a little harder.

My suggestion would be to move to Memphis!;)

Why even bother? When you 'deviate' you usually come out of pocket anyway and then 'expense' it. You don't even want to deal with the 'originally scheduled' D/H. .. just book the flight you want or need on your own recognizance and the company will reimburse you -up to the value of the originally scheduled D/H.
BT-DT. . . oh yeah!!. . you will LOVE it. Your spouse will love it even more. . stranded in MEM, while you are out flying around the garden spots of the earth. Rapings, killings, muggings, burglaries just down the street . . and . . ahh . .I won't even go there.

Why not suggest beating one self with a stick??;)

captain drew,

can you expand a little on how deviation works. I understand you can change a pairing that is a d/h out of memphis and basically d/h yourself there and start the pairing at ABC airport. When you do this though I know you have a ticket on the airline but if it cancels is it your arse on the line?

What are some other "tricks" for people who commute at FDX? Besides the obvious of being able to hold layovers at your city.

When you deviate on the front end (beginning) of a trip................

Your "Arse" is on the line if you don't make it.
Let's say the scheduled trip begins with a Commercial Deahead from MEM to OAK and the ticket value is say $300 on American Airlines.

Let's say you live in Detroit (poor you). You can request to deviate and make you own reservation from DTW to OAK. If that ticket is cost $350, you will owe the company $50 at the end of the month.

If you can get a ticket for $200 you have a positive balance of $100 to use fo Cabs, limos or another airline ticket later in the month for another trip.

If you live in MEM or choose not to Deviate (take scheduled Deadhead) and it canels for Mainteneace or weather and you don't make it to OAK..................no big deal, you just call Crew skeds and say "What do i do now?

If you deviate and you don't make it to OAK for whatever reason..........your ARSE will be speaking to someone you would prefer not to!

In most cases it is not a problem, but when the Blizzards hit or those Nasty Katrina things happen.........peoples Arses have been handed to them for missing trips.

RedEye (or whoever knows),

Does it work the same way for guys who deadhead straight to Memphis? If I live in Philadelphia but all my trips start in Memphis does the company pay for my ticket from Philly to Memphis if I cant jumpseat on a fedex plane?

In reality, (unless they have tightened it up even more) you likely have bought your own ticket with your CC that gives you ‘airline miles’ -and you end up ‘eating’ the $50 at the end of the month. . you don’t owe the Co. anything. If, you can’t get anything cheaper than the ‘scheduled’ ticket value for both ends of the D/H. . you eat $100 . . or what ever the RT difference.

The last few years I pretty much did all the deviating via Limo -and saved the Bean Counters THOUSANDS, in the course of making my quality of life exceptionally better than riding a D/H someplace.

OR. . you can forget about racking up ‘airline miles’ on your personal CC and order your tickets from Corporate Travel in MEM. THAT’S when you end up having to write the Company a check. . if you have them make your deviant reservations.

THEN . . . there is the issue that they stuck to us with the last contract, which I REALLY hated & was the main reason I voted against the contract.

I have thankfully forgotten the gory details . .someone more current can fill you in. . but it has to do with being no more than 100 miles away from the departure airport at a set time before the live departure of your revenue trip. Apparently we had some folks who were not adults and failed to show after deviating . . and they screwed it up for the rest of us who were responsible enough to know we had to be there at a certain time.

In my case, when I had LAX or ONT or OAK departures and live in No County SAN, the computer said I was outside the 100 mi radius and I had to insure I was in there MANY hours before I would otherwise plan to be there. It made it a REAL PITA, since there were SO many ways to get to the Ramp for show time, but you had to ‘check in’ from inside the 100 mi radius. Glad to be not doing it anymore :p

tiptip,

If you trip starts out of Mem then there will not be a d/h to Mem. You have to get there on your own.

I don't work for FDX but I can't imagine it any other way.

Yeah. .sure. . the Union worked that one out as a primary ‘need’
:D

If your trips start and end in MEM and there is no D/H built into the Pairing, you are on your own recognizance to get to your Show Time.

We were talking about pairings that start (on paper) in MEM and D/H to the field city, where the A/C is parked and the live revenue portion of the trip starts and ends at the end of the week. The end of the trip is a D/H back to MEM .. after appropriate crew rest.

Again. . .. if your Pairing is MEM/ATW/MEM. . you must present yourself at the ID scanner at Show Time . . by whatever means you choose to insure you get there.

True........When you Deviate you now have to preform 2 check-ins via phone or computer. The first is your intital check-in just like you would check in at Air ops at the begining.......but you can check in early if you want.........................The Bad part is the second check-in which must be preformed no later than 8 hours prior to 1st revenue leg if it is a domestic flight.........or 12 hours prior to 1st revenue leg if it is a international leg.
This is where you have to SAY "I am within 100 miles of Revenue Departure City" That is what we lost with our current contract as we did not have to do that under the FCH (old Fake contract).

Drew another change , Technically all Deviation reservations (contractually) must be made using the Fedex corporate travel office............unless you can get a cheaper fare on your own. You now must use the Fedex corp charge card tp purchase reservation tickets made by yourself, so you can't get your FF miles on your personal visa or mastercard...... The only good deal is we are now allowed to get Frequent flyer miles on Northwest. Why we can't get them on everyone else is beyond me but those are the rules..........

Gawd . . I just HATED that change! I really screwed up a good thing. Say you had a 2000 OAK departure and there is a SAN/OAK flight every 45 minutes all day long on SWA or UAL. It REALLY pi**ed me off to have to be in the damn hotel at noon! Instead of maybe 1600-1700 with a couple of ‘back ups’ .

Is that because the travel agency which runs CT is owned by Ferd’s cousin or girlfriend of something
;) ;) Those FF miles sure made life good, flying the wife and kids up on long weekends in BOI or YVR or SEA!!

captain drew,


Are any of these things being addressed in negotiations? I understand that you most likely can't talk about any negotiations in an open forum. I haven't followed FDX negotiations over the last 2 years, not sure if you all have voted down a TA. If you have though then these sort of things in the TA are public knowledge. If you havn't voted down a TA then I understand why you can't comment.

okay, so I understand pilots who commute to where their trip orginates are to be big boys and get there on their own but surely all those commuters (who arent in driving distance) arent buying airline tickets are they? are you able to ride for free on other airlines to get to where your trip starts??

Take the same example of a front-end deadhead to OAK on American Airlines. It's 2 legs, with a stop in DFW. Let's say you live in Dallas, and deviate. Rather than fly both legs, you plan to fly only the second leg. That should save the Company some money, right?


Your buddy on the same trip takes the scheduled deadhead from MEM, and you're both sitting in the terminal at the gate in DFW when American announces that the flight to OAK has been cancelled due to a mechanical issue. Your non-deviating buddy relaxes and calls control center scheduling and lays the problem in their lap. YOU, on the other hand, commence to panic to find another way to OAK because it is YOUR responsibility to get to OAK on time. Never mind that the both of you are stranded in DFW for the very same reason, because YOU have deviated from the scheduled pairing, YOU get no relief. Your buddy might wind up with a revised pairing that involves travel on the following day, or a live leg that begins in DFW or AFW, or even a deadhead back to MEM - - who knows. You, on the other hand, wind up missing your deviation check-in, missing the report time for your live leg out of OAK, you'll probably lose the pay for the trip, and you'll get to speak to your assistant chief pilot.

Perhaps you both get on a flight that gets to OAK just in time to get minimum rest for the scheduled live leg. You're still not off the hook because you missed the deviation check-in within 100 miles of the airport. You still get to talk to the ACP.


Deviating on front-end deadheads can certainly make commuting easier, but it's not without drawbacks and its own brand of stress.


One of these days, we should all try to take the scheduled deadheads out of Memphis, and see just how many of us actually can get seats.

:eek:






.

No, they're not. I live away from Memphis and I have to off-line jumpseat on a NW flight the day prior to my trip or reserve start. There are three flights a day from VPS to MEM, 0730, 1120, 1640. If my trip leaves MEM at 2200, I need to get one of those flights. I usually try the 1120 first so I have the 1640 as a backup. If I don't make it on one of those flights, I'm screwed. It really sucks, because you lose a day at home on the front end and the backend. If my trip or reserve ends in MEM, then I can't get home until the next day.

If you live in a city that FDX services, then you're eligible for company jumpseats. The big difference here is that if you have a RESERVED jumpseat (yes, there is competition for them in some cities) and the flight cancels, that's a get out of jail free card b/c you are considered to be "staging" from there. So, if your trip leaves MEM at 0300, you can catch the 2200 flight out of DFW, arrive MEM around 2400 or so and have plenty of time to make your trip. On the backend, if your trip ends in MEM at around midnight, you can catch the 0300 flight from MEM to DFW, be home in bed by 0600. All things considered, if you don't have a compelling reason to live somewhere other than MEM, like a guard/reserve job, it's your hometown, the wife loves it, etc etc, then you should strongly consider moving to MEM. Some guys hate it, others love it. I've done plenty of househunting in G'town and C'ville and they seem like great places. You can be home every single night. I'm going to move myself, as soon as I'm done with my reserve job. Whenever that is.

Did you get hired before they instituted the psychological evaluation with the Co. Shrink?:p

Or is this problem something that has started manifesting itself recently :D

Well. . it was ‘negotiations’ . more or less which got us all this crap. I got a feeling the boys negotiating were ‘fatigued’ and pretty proud of themselves for FINALLY coming up with a TA we could vote on the 1st time around. . . warts and all.

Being that none of them were ‘commuters’ I really don’t think they gave a ‘rat’s arse’ that the folks living outside MEM were getting hosed by some of these little ‘additions’ to the quality of our lives.

There is actually a little ‘friction’ between the Bubbas who reside on The Planet . .and those of us who have chosen to have a better quality of life. Somehow. . the Bubbas don’t think we are as ‘loyal’ an employee as they are. Interestingly enough. . I don’t believe it is the commuters who are the ‘air wh*res’ . . who are making getting a new contract the more difficult.

TIP and other Prospective Freight Dawgs
 

Simply put, If your assigned trip does not begin ( 1st leg of 1st duty period)
with a Commerical passenger carrier Dead head then you need to find your own way to MEM...........(or ANC , LAX whichever one is your Assinged Domicile).

Lets use MEM for example because it is the easiest. Below is a humourous but quite accurate example of what your life will be like.

If you live in PHL (your "Staging City) and are Based in MEM......and your next trip is schedule to leave MEM @ 0800Z 11 April............That means you need to be in MEM at 0200lcl this coming Tuesday. For explanation purposes this trip has No commercial Deadhead. It just leaves MEM has a short layover and returns to MEM the next night. Since you live in PHL (remember Staging City) you will (are able to) reserve the FedEx jumpseat 14 days prior.

You will show up at the PHL ramp Monday night around 2000 lcl the 10th.
You will Jumpseat to MEM and arrive approximate 23:45-0030. Once entering the crew room area, you will "Check-in" for your trip. You will then sit in the Crew room........find a Lazy boy lounger if your lucky and nap for an hour or 2.
Then you will start doing pilot stuff after about 3 cups of HI-TEST coffee..............

You will launch to some city around 0300-0345am fly for 2-4hrs (domestic only).....feeling like SH**.! When get to your Destination....... you go to the hotel hopefully before the Sun comes up......still feeling like SH**.(not likely if you are junior). You will try to get some needed sleep, until the Hotel maid ignores the Do Not Disturb sign hung on your door and either Knocks on your door asking if you want towels, or vacumes for about 20 minutes right out side your door. Then the hotel costodian will be drilling the floor right above your room for about the next 2 hours........and then if that isn't enough the local fire marshall comes to preform a fire system test of the Hotel.

After your quality 8 hours of crew rest, you might meet your crew in the lobby around 5:00 PM for dinner.............You return to your room around 6:00-6:30 PM in time for a quick shave,shower and ###. You meet you crew in the Lobby for a 7:30 Pick up to the Ramp.......You do Pilot stuff again and Fly fo 2-4hrs back to MEM arriving around Midnight........and you get to repeat the above ritual all over again for the next 5 days.........Oh did I mention that you will be feeling like SH**.


On your last night into MEM you will sit in the crew room as always but you will catch your Staging Jumpseat flight to PHL arriving at 630am. Then you will get home.feeling like SH** and your wife will say the Upstairs toilet is leaking. You reluctently fix it so she will leave you alone because you need to sleep for a few hours.......................

You quickly get it done, Kiss the wife and say "I see you in a couple hours."
You are sound asleep after 25 minutes. You are soon awoken by the Phone ringing.... and its FedEx crew skeds...........They want to know if your interested in a draft trip leaving tomorrow (actually it leaves tonight.....well at 0300 tomorrow morning)........................... and the saga continues..................the life of a freight dawg

I got the impression that the Contract we live under today was not as much negotiated as it was dictated by management. Yeah, I know, there are guys that were there that swear it wasn't that way. Nevertheless, I believe the reason it took as long after the parking lot debacle as it did was after the NMB convinced the Chairman to resign, none of our guys knew shorthand.


Fortunately, this is a new day and a new team.



I've always been a bit amused by the light-hearted (and sometimes not so light-hearted) ribbing that goes on between commuters and non-commuters. I've done both, so I've seen the advantages and disadvantages both ways. The first complaint I recall hearing was that commuters show up for work too tired to fly. Balderdash! My experience has shown that it's a lot harder to get your rest at home in the middle of all the kids and wife and bills and telephone and yardwork and ... well, you know what I mean.

It's very easy for me living in domicile to take the scheduled deadhead. While I think if we all were to do that it would put the Company in a bind, I realize it would be a hardship on commuters. On the other hand, it's a lot easier for commuters to turn down Draft trips. Well, perhaps that's not entirely correct, I have no problem at all saying no. I guess a better way to state it is it's more difficult for commuters to take Draft trips.



Now... about this "Bubba" thing.... :)


We all have our different opinions about lifestyles and locations. I'm a Memphis native and I'm happier here than I would be in, say, Phoenix or Seattle or Miami. There are folks who prefer Seattle, and there are those who prefer Miami, and so on, and so on. Variety is the spice of life, yanno. But I ain't a Bubba. :) OK, so I drive an '83 Bronco with more rust than most new cars have steel. Big deal! :) It's paid for.

It's time to focus on what we have in common, and put the petty differences aside. All for one, and one for all.


Two Years Is Too Long ! ! ! !





- The truth only hurts if it should -

THIS one is EASY! :)
 

What time does the trip leave?

Where does it go?

How long is the layover?

When does it get back?

Who's the Captain/First Officer/Second Officer?

What's the Credit Hours?

Tell me again what the show time is in local time, please?

And what's the trip number?

Oh, no, I'm afraid I can't take that. But thanks for calling. Have a nice morning.


... Log on to VIPS with Trip number and see how long it takes for someone to .... I'll leave the verb out here ... themself.







- The truth only hurts if it should -

I believe the verb is to "Prostitue themselves":mad:

I guess I have never noticed any friction between the Memphites and the rest of the world, but I do have a small pet peeve I guess. If you are going to commute in and then turn directly into your 3 am hub turn out bound, don't be all crabby to the rest of us and complain how tired you are- the rest of us came in early enough to sleep in the crash pad or live here. And if you commute in, don't go taking a sleep room away from a full hub turner. That one really gets me.

But how can I blame any of you that want to live anywhere else but here in the Planet?? And it's nice to have friends to get out of town to go visit.

FedEx1

What is the really the difference between J/S ing in to a trip and Hubturning?
Its OK to be tired and fatigued when you are Hubturning but is not when you just jumpseated in??

From my own experience as a guy that has done both (I lived in MEM for several years and have commuted for several)
As far as domestic is concerned..............I often felt better rested prior to a trip by Jumpseating in........My J/S flight would arrive approx 1145PM and I'd grab a Sleep chair and if I was lucky I got almost a 3 hour Nap. When I lived in MEM, I would try to go to bed early 8PM or so.......but would toss and turn until 10-1030PM (my normal Bed time) ...then I would wake up every so often and peer at the clock (Clock watcher) until Midnight. Then I'd perform the "SSS" routine and drive to work..............I would arrive at the AOC around 1:45am much less rested than my commuter counterpart who is still in the sleep chair.........and had been for the last 2 hours.

International can be a different story..........although if you Know in advance you are going to be the 1st sleeper (especially with a crew rest aircraft) the above still applies......even though it is a No No per the contract.

Being very tired while flying is just a fact of life at FedEx no matter who you are.
There are always the 1% that push things..........hopefully that is who you were referring to.

If you commute in, you are not entitled to a sleep room. But please make yourself welcome in the lazy boy room. Commuting is not a paid trip in. You MAY be able to get some zzz's on the commute in, while working guys can't. So they get the rooms.

Fatigue isn't ok- I wasn't implying that. If you will be too tired after the commute to fly your trip, then come in early. This is why the company had to crack down on guys jumping in right before the non stop to NRT and other long duty periods. They were simply too tired, and didn't have the proper rest.

I don't get a sleep room, either, living in MEM- unless I am turning in the hub, working both ways. BECAUSE I AM NOT WORKING. Therefore, commuters don't get them either... because they aren't working (both ways.) Whether it be jumpseating in, or driving in- both take time and wakeful periods- and neither are entitled to sleep rooms.

You never know if you are going to be the first sleeper on a long haul. Even if you are the PIC- stuff comes up, things change. I worked a flight where one of the RFO's emailed the captain the day before and asked what the sleep schedule was going to be. The captain told him he didn't know that far in advance. The guy called in sick. Probably a good iodea, he probably wasn't going to be rested.

Since you said you take a chair, I wasn't speaking to you. I was speaking of the sleep rooms.

Concur with the Sleep room ettiquette. Wroking Pilots hould have priority.

My point was with the J/S ing into a trip.......................I am better rested (usually) when I jumpseat into a night hub turn than when I lived in MEM and drove to work. This is not true for Day Hub-turns.

AS for the long international trips, J/S turn option is a moot point because it is a contractual No No. That being said I always try to email the Relief crews (or answer their emails) for the sleep periods on the long hauls .....MEM-NRT, CDG-SFS and KIX-MEM. But as you say, SH** happens and everyone needs to be flexible............99% of the time everyone is!

Unfortunately I am still tired most all the time.

Would a Midnight to noon reserve guy (I can never keep it straight, A or B) coming in a little early and getting a sleep room not cool either?

And are those guys supposed to be at the AOC or does the 2 hour call-out apply?

Thanks,

TSD

If the night flying gets to someone too much, can they solve the problem by bidding the noon to midnight reserve?

I'm guessing the noon to midnight reserve is mostly day flying, correct? reserve sucks but if night line flying is that bad then maybe day reserve isn't so bad.

We have an A and B reserve periods. These are periods of "On call availablity" i.e. sitting on the BEEPER and don't always dictate when you will actually fly..................Your chances of Day flying are certainly greater with B period but not guaranteed.

A you must be available Midnight to noon. B you must be available from Noon to Midnight.
Being available means you must be able to show in 1 hour (MEM based) once notified, or must be able to Show in 3 hours ANC or LAX based.

Crew skeds has figured little tricks and other little ways around this. This is your intial availablity only.
Once called out you could have been a Day reserve (B) and be assigned a trip that is a Day Deadhead but has a week of night Hubturns. With 18 hours advance notice they can still assign you into a night (early AM launch) or vice versa if you on on the A period and generally nobody from A usually complains about flying days.

Ain’t it the truth! They just keep getting smarter and smarter :rolleyes:

Getting back to being tired for Show Time ;)

What is the difference, flying in on the J/S to turn on a revenue leg . .OR . . living in Jonesboro . .or out at “The Lake” . . or Jackson and DRIVING in to MEM for Show Time? You’re ‘driving in’ .. make you a local Planet Bubba?

I got pretty P-Oed taking grief from some Bubbas . .when their Bubba-buddies were putting in the same (or more) travel time -under much more stressful (night driving with all the rednecks) conditions . . while I was cat-napping in from the coast on a DC-10 J/S:(

no, if you have no deadheads, you don't have a bank

jumpseating is controllable and documentable. driving is not

And . . . ..your POINT . . . . . .IS?

The company has a responsibilty to atleast have the apprearance of monitoring the crew rest times. You can do that with jumpseats. They can't with driving. Realistically, there is no difference. Legally there is.

Well we are the only company that does it. Why are you always siding with the company even on bogus issues like this? Do you realise there is no requirement by the FAA to call a JS as duty time. It is just another thing that FedEx can fire YOU on if you screw it up. I asked you before in another post. Are you really a FedEx pilot and are you a ALPA member? You have drank some serious purple koolaide!

yeah, I'm a FedEx pilot and a member, and if you can tell me anyone who has been fired for this I'd sure like to know. The only thing the contract says about the jumpseat is that if you miss a flight for jumpseat reasons you are proteced by the "no harm no foul' rule depending on a certain set of circumstances, based on what was negotiated in the CBA.
And I don't kow why you say I am siding with the company. Drew asked a question about jumpseat, I gave him my opinion. It has nothing to do with siding with anyone.

TonyC
 

sorry wrong thread,