Zulu Time

Starting class soon. Commuter also. I am wondering if someone could give me an idea of which aircraft (assumes I would even get my first choice) has the shortest time from reserve to being a line holder.

My preferences right now are:

77 MEM
76 MEM
75 MEM

Thanks.

PurpleToolBox

Is this a joke??

The order would be 757 first, 767, then 777.

BoilerUP

No love for the Bus or MD?

PurpleToolBox

They're dying aircraft. Doubtful a new hire would hold lines there.

MaydayMark

My hunch ... (it's worth what you paid for it);

I suspect the Airbus has very high maintenance costs and the 767 is a good replacement.

I suspect that the MD will be around for a very long time. It would be nice if we could get them to reconfigure it so that the lav is in the cockpit?

Daniel Larusso

Dying aircraft at FedEx has always been a very loose description. We've got a VP update that's only a few weeks old that says he MD11 and Airbus fleets are relatively young and will be around well into the next decade. These are equipment bid decisions we're talking about here, not a blood oath. They can be adjusted over time. Telling new hires who have no frame of reference that those two fleets are dying does them a disservice with respect to understanding their options imo. They don't get that we're at a company where if we order 737's or A320's tomorrow, we'll have a bunch of people calling the 757 a dying fleet the second one of those planes hits the property.

Rightseatpro

777 is obviously the longest wait to get off reserve. But, with the 75 or 76, I think that isn't an easy answer. Not a lot of new hires have been put in the 75 lately. With a growing number of 76s, a new hires best bet between the three for quickest seniority traction might actually be the 76. Who knows though, it all depends on what each subsequent class is offered until a bid comes up. Best of luck.

kronan

In the 76-77 your seniority will only improve if people are hired after you are.

To an extent, that's also true in the 75...but I'd venture a guess that no excessed airbus fo will bid into the 75, no md11 fo will bid into the 75,

but virtually all current 75 fos will bid into a 76/77/md seat eventually

Adlerdriver

It’s not always a valid assumption that new hires on the 777 are going to be on reserve the longest. There are a number of dynamics in play, such as the much larger number of retirements occurring regularly, the continued expansion of the 777 and 767 fleets and of course the excessive periods of dead time between equipment bids at Fedex. We are the only airline I know of that goes years without offering the most senior seats to current pilots and puts new hires into those seats instead.

The bottom 25% of FOs on the 777 were hired in the last two years. So, just assuming that a new guy is going to have the same experience on the senior international a/c as we might have had 10 years ago isn’t always the case. The company has been pumping new hires into that seat non-stop. There are FOs on the 777 getting lines who have been on the property less than a year. If we had monthly equipment bids, that would be a different story. But, since the company has gone more than two years without offering those seats to pilots already on the property, we end up with some serious seniority abrogation.

That ship has sailed for a while since the 777 pipeline is full until 2018 and manning appears to be stabilizing. So those on the bottom now probably will be spending some quality time on reserve. With the accelerated acquisition of more aircraft, maybe we’ll see another bid and further expansion.

For now, the ones hired 2 years ago are far from the assumed juniority many would expect. Absent a bump and flush excess bid, they’re going to be just fine. I just flew with an FO hired 18 months ago who is at about 77%. It took me 10 years to get to that point.

Now that they’ve started to fix the 757/767 training back log and the 777 pipeline is full, it’s probably safe to say that 767 and 757 are probably a better bet for quicker seniority improvement than the 777. I just jumpseated with a MEM 767 FO hired in Jan. Just finishing up IOE and differences this month. He expects to be on reserve a few months. Meanwhile, there are 757 new hires who have been stagnated on reserve for a long time while the company tried to un-fook the issues with training.

Adlerdriver

People hired after you don't improve your seniority. Fleet expansion and retirements/upgrades of pilots ahead of you does.