FedEx while a good place to work, isn’t all that and a bag of chips. They have their issues and QOL isn’t as amazing as it looks from the outside.

I will hand it to you that our present management team have severely fouled things up.

Truth. I’m really hoping to get my TOE done so I can get in on the action

Please PM me more info about your setup. I am intrigued.

I agree with you that we are going to be slaughtered this summer - in a good way for some. Many of you are going to do very well. Best of luck and please don't push yourself too much.

I haven't really heard a single downside comment from any one of the 17 bros I have that work there. One was over last night enjoying an adult beverage with me on the patio. He asked me why again I made my choice to DAL. I told him. At the time of my CJO, DAL had the best thing going. At least from what I could surmise. FF to today.....

FedEX - Fred loves his pilots. He treats them as an integral part of the operation and they are paid and compensated thusly. DAL? Take a look at what they did to us over the last year. That was a lot of hate coming our way unnecessarily. That hurts. Not going to forget it.

I admit to being snarky in my posts relating FedEx to DAL. I direct those at the sailingfun types who think none of us here had other choices. We did. We also get it that we are married to this company. Management comes and goes. We are here - like a Greek slave galley almost. I say it in jest but with some candor.

I am merely expressing my dislike at where we are tracking as an airline right now from our division's perspective. Some bridges were GBU'd to hell this summer. Not sure they are going to be rebuilt. It will take us from our side AND management from their side for us to re-build to reach the middle again. I don't see that happening overnight.

I'm guessing somewhere in history a Pan-Am pilot was having beers during a back yard BBQ, asking his buddy why he'd ever considering going to (insert any airline still alive today), while proclaiming all the good things he had going. We all have our great things and we all have our not so great things. MOST people tend to only talk about how great things are with their chosen path. While others tend to have the perpetual black cloud following them around and only talk about the bad things in their path.

I'm going out on a limb and guessing none of your 17 FredEx bros were there in 1998? It hasn't been all sunshine and roses. My FedEx bros who received a personal copy of the "With or Without You" letter share a different opinion. Today's history lesson is the FedEx contract negotiation of 1998.

Skip to 1998 and start reading. Gumm didn't invent the "Optimizer", it's over 2 decades old.
FDX Pilot History Timeline

Love Letter from Fred

Everybody gets their turn in the barrel, 2020 was your turn.

Many were hired from the mid 90's onward.

Our optimizer is different. That I can promise you talking with those FedEx'rs that were there when their "optimizer" was unleashed. Now it is not like that, they have evolved and it didn't suit them well. Will we learn the same lesson? Time will tell.

What was DAL doing at that time? Let's be fair here ok? And what happened to them versus us after 9/11? The mid 2000's? Seems we took a little trip down the path of bankruptcy - no?

Again, it pits DAL versus FedEx. I made a bad choice. But I'm here and stuck with it for the most part. I'm going to try to better it the best I can. That is the best and least drastic option. I already said TBNT to FedEx so that bridge is gone. I can however reflect on what might have been.

Oh yeah - you can take that "your turn" BS and do you know what with it. Pretty tired of you guys flippantly tossing it about. It doesn't have to be that way.

We ain't the best out there anymore. Far from it. Not the worse either. We can certainly do better.

Yeah, but who cares about history if it doesn’t fit their narrative? Thanks for the lesson to those of us who are new to the industry.

Anyhoo,

4 day GS. Day 4 is DH only. Besides per diem, is there any financial penalty in deviating on day 3?

What Drum also completely omits is covid has caused the cargo business to soar while devastating the passenger business. If things were flipped the conversation would be totally different.
It will be interesting to see how the cargo industry looks in 10 years with the return of belly freight and the coming Amazon onslaught.
P.S. Fred is not a friend of pilots and absolutely hates unions!