Great post Fatboy - just a few notes to add from what I know

Delta has a very nice profit sharing program right now. My senior FO friends are taking home easily $40,000+ the last two years. That's in addition to the 15% B fund - if they reduced that (like in their failed TA), their pay rates would skyrocket. So it's worth quite a bit and can't be discounted.

Fedex expanding - not sure about this. The TNT deal is a giant question mark at best - I see no reason to believe it will add to pilot needs for our seniority list. Beyond that we have far less pilots than we did at our peak and I haven't read anything that would lead me to believe that we will expand beyond about 4400 (and that may be optimistic). Don't get too caught up in the VP's recent letter - I seem to recall VP Cassell putting something out around November of 2014 how hiring was going to start and stay steady - think we had something like 50 hires the entire 2015 year. Things change her very quickly, Fedex is incredibly conservative (which can be a good thing) and has most likely under hired compared to VP/SCP memos over the past 10 years.

Retirement comparison - hard to get accurate info but I'm using ALPA info for Fedex (Company info seems to be way off and completely out of date) and APC data for Delta.

Delta is 3x Fedex on the seniority list. Starting around 2018, Delta appears to have a higher percentage of mandatory retirements - they seem to be about the same percentage until 2019 where Delta shows 513 pilots retiring and ALPA FDX shows 115 (x3=345). 2020 is 602 for Delta and 159 for Fedex (x3=477). This trend continues. So you may advance slightly faster at Delta in the first 2 years of employment if you're hired tomorrow but then it will be Delta in the lead for a long time. This data could be incorrect - it's just my belief that Fedex took a snapshot a long time ago of pilots reaching age 65 and never updated that chart after some retired early. The absolute highest amount of retirements according to Fedex (which is mostly likely wrong since it's so out of date - Dec 2012) is 241, the average over the next 10 years is 186. Delta high is 851 with a next 10 year average of 600 (200 when divided by 3)- so maybe not huge but significant.

 

Thanks Tuck. Very good point about Delta's profit sharing. I forgot about that. The profit sharing is a nice bonus check and it levels the playing field for most W2s between Delta and FedEx. Delta has a very wide pay scale going from the 717 up to the 777.

Another item I forgot is the Disability Sick Leave thingy (sorry not an expert) where the company will add 72 hours of pay each year to your 401K if you have banked more than 686 hours. With the new pay scales, FedEx pilots will easily be able to hit the IRS employer and member contribution limits of $53,000/year.

I don't have any intel on what LCAs or instructors make at Delta. I know Delta uses Delta Global Services (DGS) for most of their sim training (usually retired pilots). But I do know that pilots that get into specialty careers at FedEx (flight check, LCAs, flex instructors, bi-flexuals or whatever you want to call them), are extremely well compensated.

I never meant for my post to be a compensation comparison although I turned it into such. Both pay very well. You're not going to starve at either. There's just little differences which can make either very good or bad depending on what you like.

Using my Spreadsheet from 2013 (warning 2013 data) ...

FedEx had 4,288 pilots. Delta had 12,430. At the end of 2027, FedEx had a total of 2730 showing for retirement, Delta had 7478. Doing my math (warning public math), that's 63% of the FDX list retires and 60% of the Delta list retires. Those numbers came from APC. I have no idea if they're correct.

And my initial post was not correct about AA and United. United wins the first five years, but FedEx retirements by percentage catch up and overtake. Only in 2027 (the last year I looked at) does AA retire more pilots by percentage.

Am I doing something wrong with my calculations? Regardless, I think the myth about legacy retirements being much more than FedEx just isn't true. It's all about the same. Again, my math and methodology could be wrong.

 

I was hired in May of 2015. There was 130 hired below my class of 8 last year. No sure how many where hired in the first four months last year.

 

Excellent comparison, from one of the few who can speak with authority on it. I'm emailing it to some folks.

 

Not sure where u r getting those numbers from - my guess was wrong - PFC shows 83 hired in 2015- although 32 are post TA.

 

Another thing I'll add is that being able to get weekends and/or holidays off is far easier at any given seniority level at FedEX relative to pax flying. You may have to do some work and/or fly something less than optimum for you, but it can be done. That may not matter much to those who do the reserve in domicile thing, but as a commuter it was a complete change of life for me. Great for family and you can reintroduce yourself to friends who don't fly airplanes for a living.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

The junior man in the 18 May 2015 is now sen. # 4149 . The junior man in the 7 Dec. 2015 class is sen # 4278 . That's 129 numbers below May in 2015 . The 6 Jan. 2016 class had 33 pilots . A new class starts in early Feb. . These numbers come from Positive Rate Weekly . If you count the 8 in the May class that's 137 hired in 2015 from May through December . Don't know how many were hired in 2015 before the May class. Also , not sure what it may mean but when the new sen. list came out in July 2015 the bottom guys moved up 165 numbers .

 

July 1st starts the FDX new year and is the day they remove retired pilots from the list. So 165 pilots on the seniority list in July 2014 were not on the list July 2015.

 

Oh yes , only meant that I didn't know what it meant as far as future retirements were concerned .

 

I stand corrected - surprised there were that many. So PFC numbers on New Hires page are all screwed up - more hired than one would think (or could tell by any movement). Thanks for the info.