Fred at GOC...
 

Rumor is Fred showed up at GOCC the other night shortly after our mass divert fest. Don't have many details...other than he wasn't happy. Anyone else have more info?

Can't answer your question, but I have another one to add. What happened that night? Does sound like a major GOC screwup, for so many diverts ( or bad forecast). Had it been planned correctly, seems that everyone would have had plenty of extra gas to hold, or been launched later. But I wasn't working, so?

Unhappy Line forms at the rear
 

Hey - Fred can take a number and get in line if he is unhappy at FedEx.

"Its just business" but......."Its just ****ing people off".

Bring some love and $ to the table and fix the flippin Contract already.

Fire Cassel and and his group of clowns rotating around the management trough screwing up every aspect of the flying operation. Not sure attempting to save a buck here is to blame. Simulator screw ups, basing decisions seemingly pulled out of a hat with no proper planning, understaffing, training schedule square corners, inability to deliver on the Purple Promise for the reasons above and more.

Sorry - I just had a minute to comment before I get extended in the field again.

+1... and fire some Labor Relations people and idiot lawyers too. Collectively they're dragging the operation down. A smart person should easily see that.

If Fred was at GOC, who was in Toluca? Two of our corporate Challengers were parked there when I left on my way to Memphis, err, I mean St. Louis, to be one of 22 airplanes parked all over the airport ... ramps, taxiways, even on a closed runway. What a fiasco. :rolleyes:






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Well when we launched that night we had no alternate, so I assume most guys were in the same boat. We had some extra gas and got in early and got lucky - the guys behind us on final went around and it was chaos after that.

But yeah, launching the entire inbound fleet with no alternate and no extra gas tends to screw up the system when a thunderstorm parks itself over the field.

I can only imagine that at some point this week there was a meeting with a GOC weather guy at the end of the table doing the carpet dance.

For the storms on Thursday night we had an alternate and a LOT of fuel. You figure at SOME point they might figure out this whole system reliability thing....

FedEx Weather: the BEST weather money can buy! ;-)

He wasn't there when I arrived @ 0415L after a short stay in TUL. When we left GJT there was no mention of thunderstorms in the forecast although they were beginning to form S of MEM. We got a new forecast enroute to COS a mention of them until 0500z. When we left COS the forecast was the same and no alternate but we had a little extra gas. After that FUBAR!


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To me Fedex runs their flight into Memphis like a Las Vegas crap game. Pick any flight and the company runs that flight with minimum fuel overhead. They have already costed the flight out and can predict how much that flight will make the company. If a Captain is not comfortable with that number and adds gas, so be it. I always feel like the company is saying , OK we were going to make x on that flight but now it will be y. However on some nights the company's plays their hand with min fuel across the board and when a storm comes rolling in they lose. BIG TIME. Ever wonder why the MFOH is so low around the October time frame. I always taught that it was due to the fact that the summer thunderstorm season is over and the winter crud as yet to arrive. It was later explained to me by an Airbus instructor that while that may be true it's also the end of the second quarter and the company is padding fuel numbers. Like a casino player you don't have to play every hand or Engage in every roll of the table. If you don't like the fuel number add gas.

As is true with many things in life, you get what you pay for.

In an effort to maximize profit margin-"we've" been running the pilot manning lean. With the resultant service failures because of insufficient manning. (Ran into an old bud Thursday morning who had been stuck in Memphis for the day because J/S flt home had no FO)

It costs $$ to carry fuel, and if there's a wx event we can just waive our magic wand and waive the if it's not there by 9 it's free.
But what a hit to our rep. Customers don't want to hear about a T-storm that shutdown the airport at an inopportune time, all they really care about is did the mail get there. And the 9 AM package getting there at 2 or 3...or the next morning, just isn't what they're paying us for.

FWIW-the next 3 nights into Memphis with the same forecast had Alternate's planned...and an extra hour'sh worth of fuel to boot.
I haven't kept track, but maybe my 70sh percent track record of adding fuel is going to be much lower if there's been a paradigm shift in fuel planning.

T-storms shutdown ops in Memphis Thurs-Friday and yet sort went down 28 mins late