FEDEX Compensation over the years
 

Hello,

I am doing a career analysis and was wondering what a typical 5 year, 10, 15, 20 year earnings might look like. I am not asking for specifics, just a general ballpark numbers. Or another way is if someone could guess over a 20-30 year career what an average over that span would be. I appreciate any help with this. Again, just looking for ballpark numbers.

I'm also interested in this topic mostly because there is so much misinformation regarding this topic among the airlines at the moment. The United MEC recently put out this topic which compares the airlines. It looks professionally done, but I don't think it accurately reflects quality of life or the unique applications of different parts of the FedEx contract. The most notable graph is on the final page of the document which shows that a Delta pilot overwhelmingly out-earns a FedEx pilot. I have a hard time believing that is true over the lifetime of a career even if Profit Sharing is riding high for the duration.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5prdjz8wua...ter-1.pdf?dl=0

It's hard to really tell. If you make 220-250K salary throughout your career, where do you do better? I realize that you will make more down the road but is it worth giving up the front loading? I'm looking at it from a commuting standpoint. If you live in base you have more opportunity to make more I assume but what are guys really pulling in 15 years into it? Benefits are a different topic.

Food for thought, over 80% of purple airplanes are wide bodies. Less than 20% of theirs is. Yes, new hires can hold it at United but if they did, they'd fill up fast. Almost every FO at FedEx can be on wide body pay second year if they want it.


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[QUOTE=Pakagecheck;2337586]Food for thought, over 80% of purple airplanes are wide bodies. Less than 20% of theirs is. Yes, new hires can hold it at United but if they did, they'd fill up fast. Almost every FO at FedEx can be on wide body pay second year if they want it.


Yeah but Delta has guys on property less than two years sitting in the left seat making way over 200K. So that nullifies the second wide body notion at purple.

Only a narrow-body Capt at FX...of which the vast majority of FX Captains are on widebody pay.

I think anyone senior to me should head over to United. As far as this particular case, Fedex numbers are way off. Not sure about the rest. And don't forget P B S .... vacation & quality of life killer.

Since you brought it up....how many?

[QUOTE=StarClipper;2337661]This is only a few individuals for a limited time - until the maddog dies. Most Delta pilot careers don't work like that. Simalarly I have a buddy who has been there for almost a decade and can't touch the highest pay scale (747/777). I know one individual personally who is the two year CA at DAL. I made more money than him as a FO at FedEx and I'm not senior, but I am in a wide body. Did others make as much as me, yes and no. It all depends if you're the stay at home do nothing person or the live in Memphis and make bank person.

But the reality is, who freaking cares? Go work where you want. You're not going to starve at any major.

[QUOTE=StarClipper;2337661]Huh, so does FedEx. As stated by others, only a few and once those few are filled.... no more. Point is, All of this doesn't mean jack unless you compare apples to apples and the majority of FedEx pilots are on our wide body pay scale, and a majority of theirs are on narrow.

[QUOTE=Pakagecheck;2337880]FedEx doesn't have any 2yr guy seating in the left seat as we speak. However as someone else mentioned, just go where you'll be happy. All these comparisons are apples to oranges. The Pax carriers don't carry hazmat so, the cargo guy earn every extra penny or day off the get. The list go on and on and on

[QUOTE=StarClipper;2337886]Ah, yes they do. A handful of guys on probation (year one) were awarded CA in the 757. They will be going to training this year, and I'm pretty sure they're drawing captains pay right now.

Yeah that chart really emphasizes the narrow body pay. I'm an 11 year guy at Fedex and I could hold widebody captain now - guys jr to me are already in training for it. Any pax carriers have that? I think it's reasonable to say that every UAL guy hired today will be able to hold narrowbody captain in 10 years but virtually zero chance of holding widebody captain. I'd say new hire Fedex guys today will almost certainly be able to hold widebody captain in 8-9 years max and that's without any growth.

RSP,
Thanks for the back up but you made it look like I posted that.

StarClipper,
Ok, so 1 guy at Delta..... my only point, at purple, the majority of the people will be on the wide body the majority of their career(or even all). At Delta, just replace wide with narrow. Almost 25% of the right seat of the 777 have people hired within the last 1 1/2 years.

You don't think people carriers have hazmat? Pretty sure every seat is filled with a live petri dish!

Remember seeing a chart that said about the same thing for United in 1999. How did that work out?

[QUOTE=Rightseatpro;2337914]They were award but yet to be trained, and may not be trained for years so stop selling that. As previously mentioned as long as we are all happy with the company we work for who cares what other think

He wasn't selling that, just responding to your "Delta 2 yr captain" comment which is such a small percentage, and the pilots that have been awarded the 757 do have training dates, yes it is a year from now so I guess our guys will be on property over 3 years before making 75 captain pay.... oh the horror. And for the record, there will be plenty of wide body FOs that will make more money in the right seat of a wide body than in the left seat of the 75.

The question was about career earnings and a referenced report shows a narrow body look at things, I was just pointing out a FACT about our system form. IF you don't think that plays a factor in career earnings, you are sadly mistaken. This was stated to make the comparison apples to apples. This wasn't brought up because we give a flying crap what others think.

Whoever hires you will definitely pay you more

Years ago, a "study" was done by FedEx management to do what this paper is supposed to do. That is, predict a career long income. But FedEx paid the people doing the study and they appeared to define the result in advance given the manner in which the presentation was made. The pilots were in contract negotiations which is why FDX bought the study. What does that mean?

Much of a FedEx pilot's pay is not found in the hourly pay rate. It's in the extra pay received because of various clauses within the contract. Studies typically don't touch this sort of pay enhancement. And even if they did, the assumptions would require a crystal ball.

Bottom line is that you cannot always make a true assessment by simply using hourly pay rates. It's a good start but that's where the lazy person will stop. It takes research to dig deeper into a carrier's pilot contract to determine a realistic career income.

22 years at FDX, average less than 350 hours a year block time.. Started getting paid for wide body Captain at year 8, passover pay. Have 36 days a year of vacation, many weekend layovers, 36-48 hours, in my hometown. Still have a pension plan that will pay 130K a year. Never walked the streets. No hat, and best of all, no terminal bag drag!!

ummmm, I flew with a 2-year 75 Capt 2 weeks ago and he was awesome

Boom goes the dynamite

.

36 days = 216 hours.

yes there is currently a 2 year Capt at FDX and somehow he jumped ahead of at least 1 year if not 1.5 years of training dates. I have seen the seniority list myself and the training letter. Not sure how he got dozens and dozens of pilots to approve his bypass without passover. He is an instructor so maybe there is an allowance for that. Yes he is awesome and not saying there is any foul play...just looks odd without the full story. Most will have been on the training letter for more than 2 years before getting the pay.

It seems that changing seats and equipment is a bit of a struggle at FDX. Has this been the norm or strictly circumstantial? Two years from bid award to training seems like a long time. Or am I interrupting this wrong?

Bid and seniority dependent. If the bid is large and you are very junior, then you go to the back of the line for training, based on the old contract. New contract will have bidding for training slots after the award. The longest I waited for training was about 6 months. So for some a struggle for others, not so much.

sorry I should have said most very junior 757 Captain awardees will be on the training letter for 2 years before activating. Other seats and other aircraft not included in this statement but many of them will wait a while because the training letter was so long...and they didn't have an annual large Spring bid this year.

I'm a 23+ year wide body captain who works a whole lot. I average 100 hours per month over a year which pays about $33,000 per month with per diem and int'l override. I usually sell back one vacation for an additional $20,000 in lottery winnings. So I'm close to 400K per year in average annual earnings.

I put $24 K into my 401K. B-Plan adds an additional 21K into my 401K and I usually don't use my sick leave or I make it up if I do. That's an additional $21,000 into my 401K plus some extra change as ordinary income. But I'm putting aside over $58K per year into my 401K.

I work hard today so I won't have to work hard tomorrow. I'll retire by age 60 a multi millionaire. Or dead. Whichever occurs first ;).

It also had to do with the needs of the company. If they are short on a particular aircraft, they're going to train those individuals first. If they are short on your aircraft and you are leaving it, expect to be held back before they have enough in your seat.

This is going to happen whether you're at FDX or any other carrier.

Bottom line: in today's age, you're not going to starve at either major carrier. I also think comparing carriers based on long term compensation over the years is foolish. Go where you will have the best QOL. Period. End of discussion. Contracts come and go. Bankruptcies come and go. Don't spend as much as you earn. Save a little. Give a little. You'll be just fine.

[QUOTE=PurpleToolBox;2338749]It also had to do with the needs of the company. If they are short on a particular aircraft, they're going to train those individuals first. If they are short on your aircraft and you are leaving it, expect to be held back before they have enough in your seat.

This is going to happen whether you're at FDX or any other carrier.

Bottom line: in today's age, you're not going to starve at either major carrier. I also think comparing carriers based on long term compensation over the years is foolish. Go where you will have the best QOL. Period. End of discussion. Contracts come and go. Bankruptcies come and go. Don't spend as much as you earn. Save a little. Give a little. You'll be just fine.[/QUOTE

At most Companies once you've been awarded upgrade, if you don't start with a certain timeframe, you start getting Capt pay whether or not you get trained.

Probably because at most companies, they have bids at least quarterly if not every month. They're not awarding upgrades with training two calendar years into the future.

Ok so is that going to be the case when Purple starts their new biding system as mentioned in a couple post back?

No, because one will bid in seniority for a slot, so if a senior person passes, its by choice. Also, one knows that when over 400 captain slots are avail, it takes some time to train out, considering the fact that almost 10% of the company are being awarded captain slots, and, oh by the way, 85% of the captain slots were wide body captains.

Big picture, there is nothing in the old or new contract that forces the company to change the way they've posted bids in the past. The biggest change with respect to this requirement for one system bid to be completely trained out before the next system bid is put out. However we have to transition to the new system and currently we have two seats with training planned out to 2019. We'll have bids before then, but it's hard to envision having a real answer on this before late 2018-sometime in 2019. If I had to guess, I'll say that ultimately they will have basically the same number of postings per year they've always had, unless they're expecting possible FDA growth in the upcoming business plan. It always seems like FDA decisions are out of sync with the other stuff. In that case, I'd expect a small system bid that trains out in time for them to include FDA spots in a larger system bid, or a small system bid before another larger one. None of this is really the problem though, training backlogs are.

You're still not getting my point. As an example, at other companies you bid for Capt and training date, however that training date must be with a certain timeframe "I think 3mths at UA" if not, you start getting Capts pay whether or not they move you Class.

Sounds like what you're saying is at Purple even if you bid for training under your new system, the company can keep pushing back the trading date with no penalty

Nope, I totally get your point. They can do that when there are say 10 captain slots, not 417. You are correct, other companies have that provision, we do not. As Adler stated, small bid thats possible. But also, small bid, the then most won't have been awarded it. Yes, they could potentially push it back with no penalty. As I stated before, it didn't cause me grief and I upgraded at 90%.

I understand what you're saying now, just thought with smaller bids, these provisions should be in place to prevent unnecessary moving of class dates.