How Long Would You Wait?
 

FedEx has been my goal, but I’m not there wearing purple. A quick opinion question. How long would you stay with a legacy before deciding changing to FedEx would not be worth it?

I know it’s opinionated and there are many ways to gauge what is most important to people. Just curious to hear what others answers are.

At "less than a year" you're not on up 2nd yr pay, you got maybe 200-400 guys below you. In my case, around 300 seniority numbers, and 8 months seniority, and a crashpad in EWR. A friend told me once he gave FedEx 1 year to give him a call or else he was staying put at Delta. I thought that was pretty good advice and adopted the same mindset.

We're both flying Purple jets. :D

Although, in all seriousness, I think there's so much more at play than just the time you've spent at a legacy (while very important). Where do you live, how old you are, WHICH legacy is it (1 yr at UAL yields about 200 guys below you, 1 yr at DL... 1000?) etc, etc. I've met people that left UAL after 3 years to come to Purple and people that came straight form newhire training at DAL/AA/UA/SW, late 20's to late 40's.

After having been here over a year, looking back I’d probably bail at the 1-2 year point.

Regardless, good luck to you my friend. It's a fantastic job.

Given that you've been at both, how would you compare QOL/Time away from home? I'll be commuting from somewhere that is a PITA for Fedex, but easy at UA. I'm only looking at another 10 years or so, so waiting a long time for life at a company to get better isn't really what I'm in for.

On a side note, when does the A-Fund starting paying? I'm trying to run the numbers on the $$ (as best I can).

Thanks!

Just for discussion purposes ... I was hired at PanAm in 1987. PanAm had not hired in MANY years.

In fact, before they could interview "new hires" they had to recall the rest of the furloughees (many of whom had been furloughed for 18 years).

To my surprise almost all of the furloughees came back to work. Some of them had not flown the entire time so PanAm Training changed the syllabus to incorporate extra (non-graded) sims for FE's upgrading to FO.

Very happy with the decision. QOL is much better here after 1 year than it would be at said legacy airline after two years. Commuting is very easy with airline DH's (which I've been fortunate enough to hold), more days off, lower block hrs a month is easier on me even with 90% night flying and 80hrs block during the day. The guys are great to fly with.