Rum Runner

I was in your shoes a few years back, and left United for FedEx. My biggest reason was PBS. The ability to manipulate your schedule here (FDX) is so much better/easier. Don't want to work nights, drop or trade them. Only want days, hawk open time. Want 3-4 weeks off using 1 week of vacation, bid to conflict it. All these things are possible here, not possible there.

You've already mentioned most of the same pros/cons that I had when making the decision. Since you would be commuting to both, I'll add that the FedEx commute is a ton easier. I'll also say that with our different type of flying here, you can find your niche of what you like, and stick with it for essentially the same pay (yes, the 777 ends up making more in the end, but for the sake of argument...)

My main concern here, as Albie said, is what happens when we get our first ever new CEO? That will happen sometime in the next few years I would guess. Not too worried about drones as of now, others have pointed out why. I guess Amazon could make a run at us down the road, I'm not sure how that would play out.

At the end of the day, I had nothing bad to say about United. They have great people, and as far as the pax carriers go, the most airplanes on the highest pay scale. So your career earnings there would be pretty good as well. Do what's best for you and your family and don't look back. Can't go wrong either way!

PM me if you want to talk. Good luck!

Airbum

I'm a UPS guy, our international has a lot of 10-14 day long trips flying around the world and only coming back to the states at the end. I always thought FedEx was the same way.

Do the pax 777 guys do the same?

BoilerUP

I knew a UAL 777 CA who would do four ORD-FRA-ORD trips each month.

That'd be like doing SDF-CGN-SDF or MEM-CDG-MEM "turns"...

HoursHore

Have you been watching the news? Why would anyone want to fly people? They're the worst.

cgflier

If one of your decision points is the defined benefit plan at FX do a little research. Our plan hasn't changed I think since 1993; meaning, a captain retiring today with max pay at 25 years gets the same retirement pay as a captain did the day he was hired. No COLA no increase. I personally like our plan, I would just like them to give us a COLA or increase the max multiple.
Most of the young FO's I fly with want to ditch that plan and just get a bigger 401k or B fund.
My thought is the company/union will freeze the DB plan before anyone hired recently get anything of value out of it. The company is not going to give us any retirement improvement that does not also benefit them in some way. Any improvement will cost us elsewhere.

Jumbo Pilot

I was in a similar situation 11 years ago... Like others have stated... There is no reason to NOT go to FedEx interview.

Do your best, and If you get hired... then you make your final decision.

I'm glad I left a legacy carrier at the 11.5 month point and have no regrets.. But that is my situation.. Your's may be different.

The ease of commuting on FedEx though takes a lot of stress out of the airline gig.

Congrats and good luck!

FLPS30GRDWN

Similar situation here, having the same thoughts as Flying J. Thought I'd jump in...

I'm a AA guy at the one year mark with GOBS of retirements ahead of me (Same as FedEx last time I looked.) Does it change the anyone's input if I live/work from an AA base? It's a short commute from where I'm at with multiple FedEx flights daily from home to Memphis. Currently I'm seeing mostly positive for a move. The only downside I can see at all is committing to a commute. But I know tons of guys do it and seem to make it work just fine.

I've already won the lottery but I've never met a FedEx pilot who looks across the fence and says "that'd been nice" I have however met plenty of pax pilots that do gaze fondly and the ones who think it's a bad deal are typically uneducated on FedEx anyways.

$.02 for unmanned... no one ever seems to talk about the fact that drones would most likely still need some kind of "operator". So wait more time at home, prob a really good pay still, fly my own plane when I want.... sign me up!


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pinseeker

Neither the company nor the union (unless you mean the pilots voting for it) can freeze the DB plan.

Also, to match our current DB and DC plan, a new hire would need a stand alone DC plan of about 30% under the current contribution limits.

Pakagecheck

Food for thought. FedEx has some of the worst trips being flown. With that said, we have the best trips in the industry. But one man's trash is another man's treasure. I haven't flown pax but my buds at my guard unit do and the comparison to the types of flying is huge. We have a great deal of different types of flying. Our international trips do what the pax do but mainly we hit the road and stay out for a while hitting multiple destinations and just not over and backs. There are single departure lines where you commute to work once a month, but if you don't like being gone 10-14 days at a time you can do multiple smaller trips. Plenty of new hires are doing international every month. Domestic flights do a lot of what we call hub/spoke flying. IE, Denver-memphis-denver all week. Over half of our flying is during the day. The average for most people is less than 400 block hrs a year. That is not sitting any reserve, but a commuting line person. Depending on the jet one gets as a new hire, it might take a couple of years to get to your happy place, and it's a really good chance is will be on a wide body because over 80% of our crew force is there.

As far as commuting goes, I've been a commuter my entire time at purple. A lot of it is on the company's dime positioning me to start/end a trip. But when it's not, it is pretty painless unless you live in a city with a boatload of Fedex pilots and limited jumpseats. Many of our pilots bid the plane that services their city(can be a role of the dice since system form changes) and are hardly ever gone from home or have to commute without living in domicile.

I get people want to share their triumphs and typically don't like to share their decision mistakes with others but since the first of the year, I have flown with people that have left Southwest, Delta, and United, and they all share rather quickly that they flew somewhere previous and how happy they are to be at purple.

The guy that sponsored me at FedEx years ago told me, If you don't mind not walking through the terminal in your uniform, being on the other side of the field and if you want food with meals and a retirement, FedEx is the place to be.

As I type this, I'm currently on an over 60 hour layover, and every 3 hours and 45 mins getting another hour of flight pay to NOT operate the airplane. Don't get me wrong, I really like flying, but I like getting paid to not fly even more! And there are a bunch of long layovers in our system, 24/36/48/60/80/100 etc.

Go to the interview, hopefully have a great decision to make and keep asking questions to see what will be right for you.

Pakage

Gilligan13

Does the 777 at FedEx have 7 day trips or are they all 10+ days?

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