Recent FDX hiring background
 

Just curious of the experiance and background of those getting the nod yes recently. How many came from another “major” such as myself? Lets say in the last 2 years for sake of discussion to keep it “recent”.

Quoting a few messages on recent classes:

Jan class of 20 new hires were all assigned MEM B-757 first officers. Hailing from USAF, USN, ANG, Delta, Spirit, JetBlue, Compass, Skywest, Sun Country, ABX, Trans States, Express Jet and Net Jets. Alas, no Marines!

Dec class of 25 new pilots. Compass, Trans States, Jet Blue, Skywest, Republic, Atlas, Express Jet, United, PSA, US Marine Corps, US Navy and US Coast Guard. The new hires were awarded MEM MD-11, A-300 and B-757.

A Nov class had new hires assigned as MEM based FOs in the MD-11, A-300, and B-757. From USAF, USMC, Delta, ABX Air, PSA, Trans States Airlines, Expressjet, Republic Airlines, Skywest, Kalitta, Compass, and Corporate Aviation.

A Sep class of 10 new pilots. They come to us from JetBlue, Allegiant, SkyWest, Air Wisconsin, US Air Force, US Navy, Air National Guard and various corporate flight departments. The new hires were awarded MEM MD-11, A-300, and B-757.

Another Sep class of 23. Atlas, Jet Blue, Southwest, Compass, Endeavor, ExpressJet, Republic, Go-Jet, Aloha Cargo, Honeywell, Corporate, NASA, USAF, USN, ANG and yes, 2 Marines! They were assigned MEM FO on the MD-11, A300, and 757. We also have 2 heading to HKG and 1 to CGN

A July class of new hires were assigned as MEM based FOs in the MD-11, A-300, B-757 as well as CDG 757 and HKG 75/76. From USAF, USCG, Atlas, Express Jet, Compass, Envoy, Delta, Skywest, Republic Airlines, Pinnacle, and Corporate Aviation.


As a side note, FedEx hired 428 pilots in 2017.

How many classes do they run a month? Just one?

I hear the hiring numbers for 2018 are up to 500!

Thanks

It seems like 2/month except maybe 1 in Dec due to Peak.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Don’t forget the other part of the equation, the FedEx pilot group is roughly 4300. So it’s over 10% hiring a year.

And, if you came from another major, what was it that made you want to jump ship where you were?

For example, there is a effort within our union to try and freeze our current retirement A Plan and shift to a Variable Benefit Plan. How much did the fact that FedEx has an A Plan factor into your decision?

Well Played!!!! :p Well Played indeed!!!!

I left one of the big 3. I'm 28. I fully intend to retire WITHOUT a pension. That's ok. With the time I have to put in, I think I'd be alright with a 16-20% DC too. And I can control it.

I came here for commuting ease and stability (FDX is a powerhouse of a company.) We'll see.

The company already offered us a DC of 16.5% in return for the A plan. The numbers didn't work, the A plan is worth more, not to mention the added B plan.

In your case, being able to work 37 years, you might make out better in that scenario. But what happens if you have to go on long term disability around age 50? With our current plan, if you have a high 5, you will be able to retire at 60 with $130k a year plus whatever you accumulated in your B plan before you went on disability. With a straight DC plan, if you go on disability, all contributions to your retirement plan stop because benefit payments don't count towards income for a DC plan.

Delta's current DC and profit sharing are better than what you are willing to take.

Although I didn't come from another major, I had offers and chose FedEx--with the A-Plan being the major factor in that decision. I see the 9% B Fund as the hedge against the lack of a COLA in the A fund. I really don't get why the union is going down this path.

I came from a regional, had other potential options. The A-plan/B-plan hybrid was a large factor, as well as the deadheading/deviation, and no passengers/wanting to try something different.

I have 30 years left and I wish to Keep the A-plan. As mentioned, having to go out on medical leave will kill your b-plan contributions.

I really like the hybrid options we have now and wish to keep it that way.

I left a legacy and chose FedEx due to:

1. Scheduling/line bidding/no PBS
2. A Fund. Especially, when combined with the B Fund
3. Ease of commute/deadheading options
4. Upper management
5. Boxes don't talk

I am a fan of our current hybrid plan, and would rather increase the B Fund to offset the A Fund. I really don't know why we would look at this outside of section 6.

Under no circumstance, do we ever contemplate PBS. Would kill our QOL.

Does anyone know the percentage of interviewees that have a PE?

I agree with many of your sentiments, not necessarily this one. If you had a PBS like Continental did or SkyWest has you’re right, it would kill this place. One like ASA/ExpressJet has on the CRJ side ain’t that bad. It is all in the work rules and programming that are negotiated. I’m not saying it would be easy, and some factions would certainly be upset (commuters to home city), but it can be done. May just not be worth the work. PBS gets a blanket bad name, but not all forms are bad.

We already know what PBS will look like on Purple property: secondary lines. They demonstrate to us every month how it will impact the various parts of the contract.

PBS will absolutely wreck the benefits of the vacation system.

I am a "NO" voter for PBS, period.

PBS will destroy our vacation system.

We have the best vacation system in the industry, why give it up?

We have the best retirement in the industry, why give it up?

I was hired last June and my previous 5 years in the airline biz used PBS. Line bidding was a bit cumbersome at first, but I turned a 9 day vacation into six weeks off. I'm a believer in line bidding to the death now.

PBS creates efficiencies for the company by removing conflicts with vacation, training, etc. It reduces the number of pilots that you need to operate the schedule, and therefore your rise up the seniority ladder would be slower. You can forget about 6 weeks off with 9 days of vacation as the last guy pointed out.

Granted, some airlines have it better than others. All depends on how it's negotiated. It would absolutely kill our vacation, regardless.

Take a look at our secondary line process if you want a glimpse at what it might look like.

Anyone who would even consider allowing PBS here should be required to bid a secondary line for six months prior to voting.

When I was on the 777, and could bid 15 days in July, I could use 15 days and have 9 weeks off.

Bid a 12 day trip the first week of June, off the last two weeks.

5 weeks off in July.

Bid a 12 day trip the last week of August, first two weeks off.

You can't get 9 weeks off using 15 days vacation with PBS.

1000 times this.

I spent 11 years with PBS at two separate companies and never want to go back to it.

Line bidding is transparent. PBS is not.

Exactly, no PBS is worth 15% in pay at least. Something else to consider when the next guy is drooling over United or Delta’s WB Captain scale that maybe 20% of their pilots get.

I end up with secondary's quite a bit. Sometimes they are far better than any line I could ever hold, sometimes they stink. But even when they are great, they are awarded at the last minute, and it is never transparent, nor do I know what to expect. Accepting PBS would be insanity. I hope we never do that.

I turned down my recall at a legacy after a short furlough for two reasons, not even considering retirement. In fact, I think I wasn't even aware of what the retirement was. I appreciated the security of working for FedEx, because it completely sucks to be furloughed, and I really liked my job at FedEx much better. Mission oriented, about the flying and not the passenger and flight attendant BS, flexible schedule, and just more enjoyable all around.

I second everything you guys are saying, absolutely positively no PBS. But that’s not the monster infront us facing right now. I wish guys felt the same way about not changing the A Plan. That’s where the focus needs to be.

For the gray-beards out there, please, please educate the masses of 5-millionaires and 3-millionaires sitting in your right seats about how PBS would negatively impact our quality of life at Purple.

I thought PBS was awesome when I was at the regionals -- it gave me what looked like quite a lot of control over my schedule. If you'd asked me about bringing PBS on property when I was in indoc, I would have been all for it. I'm certain there are guys at other majors/nationals/LCCs/ACMIs who think the same based on their experience.

I was fortunate in initial to be paired up with an upgrading captain who also became my de-facto "sponsor" and explained the Ways Of The Force, and things like how the downsides of PBS were far more substantial than my perceived upsides based on my previous experience. Having never bid a vacation, or bid a line, or bid a VTO, I had no idea how these things worked, nor how the contract language could be used along with a little strategy to get a whole lot of time off and still get paid for it. I was woefully ignorant...and I've been fortunate to fly with numerous Captains who have continued to educate me on how to figure out life at Purple. Now with a sliver of experience under my TSA-approved belt, the answers seem so crystal clear now, but there are a lot who haven't figured it out for themselves yet.

There are going to be a lot of us new guys who will be voting members when the next contract comes around. Please make the effort to exercise good mentorship with us so that we will be smart when it comes to these issues.

The ultimate setup would be a PBS system that did not know your planned absences. I doubt the company would ever go for that bc that’s one of the main efficiencies of PBS.

That would be awesome. PBS is so much better on a month to month basis. But if it keeps you from being able to turn a week of vaca into 6 weeks off then that would suck.

Or a vto during a vacation month.

Explain why it’s better

I think this is quite debatable, as you'll have to specifically define your terms with respect to "much better".

Line bidding has predictability and visibility/transparency that doesn't exist in PBS, even if the "blind to your conflicts" method could correct for the harm to the vacation system. You know beforehand exactly what schedules are available, and you can generally predict what you can and cannot hold on a regular basis. These are substantial QOL elements in and of themselves.

The PBS slot machine's random payoff of the layovers I want on the dates I want (sometimes) doesn't necessarily counter that predictability for many folks.

Again, PBS is an efficiency tool for schedulers and IMHO a sucker bet for pilots that offers fleeting bright, shiny things without actual gains in QOL behind them.

One man's thoughts:

I am mid thirties with two years in at Purple. Prior to Purple I spent nine years flying RJ's and one year at an Atlanta based Legacy carrier.

1. In regards to PBS - adopting PBS would have an incredibly negative impact on our QOL at Purple. We enjoy the most robust vacation system in the aviation industry. By robust I mean that you often have many options when it comes to using vacation. One can choose between maximizing time off, pay, or at times selling the vacation. The truth is that at some point in the year most of us need that extended break. I can typically handle flying at night without much issue (sure some nights are a lot harder than others) but those breaks with a week of vacation are often well needed breaks from the grind. That being said, PBS would deteriorate that benefit. Even if the language was pretty restrictive at first it would be under attack with every passing contract. Next thing you know the benefit is completely gone. Why even open that door?

From the companies point of view, and I've said this before, adopting PBS would create a need to completely change how we build our schedules. Hub turns could no longer be a string of single day pairings. Every week of hub turns would have to be built as a full week of flying. This restricts a great deal of their flexibility and ours. Need just one day off? Now you can drop that one day. With PBS it is likely you would have to drop the entire week, greatly decreasing flexibility. Likely that sick calls would go up as well.

2. Retirement - The legacy I came from was contributing 15% to a DC plan at the time I left. I think that might be 17% now but I'm not sure. With our current A plan it takes just over $2.5 million dollars to generate the annual income and that is assuming between a 5 and 6 percent return. If we were dumb enough to rid ourselves of this plan then I have just given up $2.5 million dollars overnight. Unless my classmates from the legacy all have over $2.5 million plus whatever the company has contributed to my B fund in their retirement accounts at the 25 year mark then I count myself ahead because that is the intrinsic value of what my retirement will be worth at 25 years. Why would I be in favor of giving that up? I'm not. In fact, I am highly concerned about what is happening right now but I'm listening. I have flown with a few guys who say, "you have plenty of time to make it up." Why would I want to make it up? I only caring about getting further ahead.

Anyhow, just my opinion on those two subjects. I love flying for Purple, it's an incredible job and I can't even begin to tell you how great the crew force is to work with, day and night. We have an excellent training department and our management in my experience has been great. I play by the rules, commute responsibly, and enjoy the benefits.

-UA

Great post, UA. I agree 100%.

PBS gets a very bad rap due to poorly negotiated rules governing said system. We DO have PBS at purple and it sucks. In my view our secondary line bidding process needs to adopt many improvements.

-Transparency. We need access to the record generated by the award engine as it chugs through the pairings. We should be able to see who got a pairing ahead of us, why an available pairing was not awarded, and the order in which pairings were considered.

-ability to knock out trips with vacation with similar results to line holders.

-a round or two of practice awards to catch bidding errors and provide a degree of predictability to the process.

-logic to control the amount we fly. We all don’t want to fly the same company generated average. There should be a credit window that allows for low and high credit line construction.

-bid sheet logic to allow for “if not this than this” arguments. As it stands now it’s just a wishlist that tends to be all or nothing IMHO.

To be clear I am not advocating PBS to replace our line bidding process. All of the above features and more were available to ASA pilots, so it can be done and we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
In the end I fear none of this will happen as the company has little interest in improving our “PBS” and so much of negotiation is a zero sum game...

Communism would work well too....if only the right people were in charge.... :rolleyes:

Actually, the best thing the company could do would be to make our secondary bidding system as good and pilot friendly as possible. We're not negotiating and the improvement process is supposed to be happening (well, should have happened quite a while ago). So, the ball's in their court and there's no zero sum involved.

They could make it the most kick-ass PBS anyone has ever seen and hope that people start warming up to it. In the meantime, at least we'll have a better secondary process. Or they could put a little lipstick on the pig we have and pretty much guarantee we'll never see it here.

Regardless of how great guys coming from former PBS companies insist it can be, there are still a bunch of reason why it's a terrible idea.

• It's a huge manpower win for the company, so less pilots
• With that efficiency will come less trips in open time, less trading options. (of course the counter to that is "everyone gets what they want, so no need to trade....:rolleyes:)
• Less pilots and less open trips = less reserves required - Local MEM guys can say "buh bye" to spending a month on reserve and getting used for one trip
• PBS will deny all the junior folks the current avenues they have to get better trips (Trip and training conflicts, min days off, OTP, VMU, BLAs)

If you don't think we would get completely SMOKED by the company negotiating the PBS programming rules, you probably just haven't been here long enough. Maybe they fixed it by now, but when United went to PBS every month there was so much flying left by the time the top half of the list built their moderate schedules that the bottom half had to be maxed out just to cover it.

Can someone share the junior to senior base rankings? More importantly how long will it take to hold lax? Thanks.

Can someone explain what PBS is and how it works, or link to an article that discusses it? When I google it, all that comes up is the television network.

12 years currently

And yet we have a group of college educated pilots who make up our MEC who don’t seem to get it. This all began as a project to sweeten the pot for our senior pilots who won’t be around for the next contract. Now, it has gained a life of its own and they must keep it going to justify the time and money they have sunk into it.

If you have already maxed out your A Plan benefit, no problem. If not, we are just going to freeze that 2.5 million benefit you talked about (that is also GUARANTEED), in exchange for a Plan where the pilot basically bears all of the risk.

Not so fast.

Remember, the whole point of PBS from The Company's perspective is to increase productivity and thereby reduce manning, i.e. costs.

When manning is decreased because PBS makes us more efficient, there won't be sufficient reserves to cover drops. You'll own the trips you're awarded, no drops, no trades, no changes. PBS has often been compared to our Secondary Line construction. It's actually much worse. With PBS you'll get your trips and you'll like them, period. :o






.

I come from a carrier that had PBS, and can’t stress enough how BAD PBS is from pilot stand point. It would be detrimental to our quality of life here at FedEx! It is only a tool for management to increase utilization.

PBS is so wrong in so many ways as you described in your post, plus many other reasons. It’s bad when even the #1 pilot on the seniority list can’t hold their first choice, due to pilots junior to them only being able to hold the trips the #1 pilot wants, because of vacation and training. I know it’s hard to understand, but the computer doesn’t care about your seniority if the trip you want will only fit in a junior pilots schedule. It negates any seniority to fill everyone’s schedule as efficiently as possible.

The PBS system is just a computer algorithm that tries to fill the seats. The system is programmed by the company for the company. No matter any transparency, or control you think you might have, the company pays for and will run the program. Transparency only allows you to see how bad you are getting screwed, and just makes you more frustrated.

There is a huge learning curve on how to use PBS and many months to years of bad bidding going on before you even start to scratch the surface of all the “options” that you can ask for. You can very easily screw yourself.

I was SO happy to come to a carrier that didn’t have PBS.
I implore all FedEx pilots to say NO! to PBS!