5/6 Class

2 MD11
2 767
6 A300
7 757

5/20 Class:

5- MD11
2- 767
10-757
7 - Abus

"The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

~ Mark Twain, the MD-11, and the Airbus

Looks like the same old hiring into those two dying bidpacks...resulting in rocketing seniority for those who choose to stay on those two planes. Welcome aboard everyone, and keep on coming!

Anybody have the class drop for today 06/03/19 ?

757 - 10
767 - 6
MD11 - 5
AB - 5
777 - 2

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777 new hires damn! Thank you!

6/17:
6 - 75
6 - 76
5 - 77
5 - MD
3 - Bus

How do they decide seniority in class? Last 4 of the SSN or date of birth?

Last 4 of SSN. 9999 being most senior.

Well, I’d be SOL

Sounds like the caboose only holds the title for 14 days.

Huh? SOL? How so?

Presumably he has a low last four digits? Spitballing here. Is there a logic test in the process?

Good God, you’re getting a 757 slot for your first assignment at an “airline” and folks act like they’re being sent to the Gulags in Siberia. The 757 at FedEx, right out of the gate, is a great place to be. You’ll advance quickly in terms of relative seniority in the right seat and you’ll have the opportunity to bid out of the seat in a little over a year, worst case scenario, and move to a wide body. I did 3 years in the right seat of the 757 and had a good time (all the while on widebody pay) and flew with several captains who sat sideways working the panel before even seeing the right seat at FedEx.

Exactly this lol

In retrospect, you’re 10000% right. 757 wouldn’t be my first choice, but not the worst option out there.

Exactly an over-privileged millennial. Lol.

757 is the BEST first airplane at FedEx, IMO. Quickest movement and you get to see the “worst” of our flying. The guys who go straight to the 777, oh boy... good luck with your first hub turn, haha. They are so spoiled.

2 yrs here, bidding 27% on the 757 and holding daytime DH’s. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone.

Except you're basically a FedEx RJ pilot

If you are here for the glory, you will certainly be disappointed.

Fine by me. Easier airports to get in and out of, quiet downtown layovers. + seniority... I took all of June off for vacation.

I took that as simply meaning you'll be starting out in the hole with @20 guys in front of you so last choice and lower seniority for ever.. And the Airbus went the most junior in a lot of the classes this year.

If the 75 is so good and you're on WB pay, then why did you leave it?

It's all relative. If the payscales were reversed, I wonder how many senior people would stay on the 75? Probably not many.. lol..

Why would anyone on the 777 ever have to do a hub turn?

There are a lot of people that would rather sit at the bottom of the list on the 777 then be 10% on the 75. Its all about preferences.

But thats whats great about FDX as there is a schedule type for just about everyone.

Damn, you got me all figured out :D

That’s exactly what I was eluding too, but I’m an “over privileged millennial” sooooo :)

Because someone’s gotta fly TPE-KIX-NRT, KIX-PVG-NRT, CDG-CGN-CDG or the dreaded CGN-CDG-MUC-FRA.

The 777 is hardly immune from multi-leg duty periods and hub-turns. Certainly not to the same extent as the domestic bubbas but if you’re junior, you won’t avoid them all the time.

Agreed. I've done those! But still way different than the 75 trips, or even AB for that matter. But I truly think the 75 hub turn lines out of CGN are probably the roughest the system.

The CGN hub turns aren't that bad. Every airport has an ILS and towered operations and the weather is no where near as bad as what happens in the states where cells up to FL600 aren't uncommon. I'll take CDG-ARN-HEL vs HRL-LRD-AFW any day and twice on sunday.

Sorry but HKG has the best bidpack.. Double deadheads, long layovers, 5 star hotels, & widebody pay. :)

This is great! While the thread is on the subject, could y'all expand on some of these duty sequences? What times do these legs operate? What are some examples of typical "hub turn" pairings?

Anyone care to chime in with what they consider the most challenging pairings on the different aircraft types?

I went to a job fair a while back, one of the recruiters was like, "are you sure you want this job?? Do you know how rough our schedules are?!?"
I'm at one of the ULCCs where we do some pretty nutty red-eye work. I frequently wonder how much worse it could possibly be flying boxes.... At least there would be quieter; no medical emergencies or drunken brawls in the back of the plane.

Thanks!

The “mean” ugly pairing is leave the hotel about 7pm central time fly two legs into a hub take a 1.5 to 3 hour break and leave the hub about 4am with one leg to a hotel, 11 hours in the rack, and repeat 3 or 4 times a week. 4-6 hours of block for 6 hours of pay. The good news is you will never ever leave the hotel late because of a Flight attendant.

Again these are the ugly pairings.

Stop trying to put lipstick on a pig, these schedules get brutal at times especially during winter. Did them on the 727 and sure don’t miss them.

What a poser. Weren’t you one of the dirty thirty? You sure it wasn’t a Falcon? The 72 was gone before you were sniffing around for a job here in 2015. You think my description makes those lines look good? You must fly some real junk at Air Kazakhstan.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣, you truly crack me up bubba. BTW I JS with you on 767. That’s the good thing of knowing who you are and you not knowing who I am.
And yes you were very professional. And you did talk about you being the big wig in the small town you lived in.

Don’t feed the troll.


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"Challenging" can be very much in the eye of the beholder. Looking at 777 trips, one would have to begin by assuming spending 13-15 hours in-flight regularly is acceptable. Some guys would never even consider that, so it really depends on perspective. Beyond that, single leg duty periods were always a goal of mine. I might be willing to accept a two-leg day on a 12-14 day trip to get an international front-end deadhead on the trip. With reasonable seniority, it's not difficult to avoid turning.

777 trips that have multiple leg duty periods usually involve an initial long flight to Europe or Asia (or maybe a deadhead there to start). After that, some of the city pairs I already mentioned with 1-2 hours on the ground between legs. Times are usually "night" in the local area but the CGN-CDG-MUC-FRA duty period is during the "Euro" day, ending up in FRA in the early evening. Some guys might make a big deal that the "night" flying in Asia is really day flying on their body clock. I've never cared. Once I raise the gear on leg #1 and leave the US, I don't care what time it is back home. Putting that in my cross-check is a sure fire way to screw up otherwise good rest. Sleep when tired has always worked well for me.

The most unpopular 777 duty periods for me are the 7+ block hour, single leg, 2-pilot flights. DXB-SIN, SIN-KIX, SIN-SYD followed very closely by the MEM-ANC or IND-ANC flights. I'd rather bang out a couple of 1-2 hour legs with a quick turn than do those longer, drool cup flights with 2 guys. But, there are some challenging two leg days on the 777 too. I'll give you a few examples of duty periods I would avoid with city pairs along with the takeoff / landing times in Z. You can do the math if figuring body clock time is valuable to you.

HKG-KIX-NRT (1420-2140) - 5:14 Block
NRT-ICN-SZX (0005-0800) - 6:08 Block
(the two DPs above are back to back on the same trip with a 24 hour layover - i.e. a complete circadian swap required on that layover)

NRT-PEK-PVG (1225-1920) - 6:12 Block
Any turn thru PEK has huge suck potential because of ATC delays and the incredible ability of local controllers to turn a 10 minute taxi into a 1-hour Magellan tour of the airport.

Here's a completely different ball park. A 3-duty period series of hub-turns CDG-CGN-CDG. 3 days in a row, takeoff at 18:50Z, land back at CDG 22:46Z. So, basically day flying considering a US body clock. 2:27 Block each day. 17-hour layover between each duty period. If it was a MEM domestic trip to ATL and back, it would go senior.
Now the rest of the story - The trip starts a week before these 3 duty periods and goes MEM-ICN, then ICN-HKG, then HKG-LGG followed by a deadhead from LGG to CDG. If you still know or care what your home body clock after US-Asia, intra-Asia and Asia-Europe revenue flights, you're much better at sleep management than I. So, I would consider this trip challenging when the details are considered.

Really good info! Thank you!

[QUOTE=Adlerdriver;2839719]"Challenging" can be very much in the eye of the beholder.


Thank you so very much for this detailed reply, really great info!

If you've got some more typing left:
What proportion of 777 trips are 12-14 day 'round-the-world types? Any other schedule patterns that are common?

How easy is it too get long stretches of days off to balance out being gone from home almost half a month?

As it has turned out, nearly everyone I know is in the pax hauling business. Details about life on the freighter side of the industry are somewhat mysterious. Thank you again for adding some color for me.

(If anyone has similar info from the other FedEx fleets, I'm all ears)

Things can vary, but I'd say they'll only get better. We're getting 7 more 777s this year and have orders to bring our total up from the low 40's to 55 aircraft over the next few years.

For July (in the FO seat), 22% of the lines are single trip lines (16% FO and 6% RFO). They range from 10 days on (18 days off) with 74-79 hours of pay to 14 days on (14 days off) with 84-87 hours of pay.
Obviously, with those lines, you get the rest of the month off. Fly at the beginning of June and then at the end of July and you string a months worth of days off together without using vacation. However, I don't mean to imply those single trip lines are necessarily the most popular. They obviously have their merits, but don't appeal to everyone. It's not difficult to get single departure FO trips as a junior pilot as long as you don't mind multi-leg duty periods and (if any) domestic front/back deadheads. It's also relatively easy to get single departure RFO trips without deadheads, but those usually are more popular than FO trips.

After that, the majority of the bid pack is two trip schedules. One tiny 2-day and an 8 or 10 day all the way up to an even split of 5/5, 4/6, 5/7, etc. Generally speaking, we're talking varying levels of really, really good. There are some suck trips, but when you compare them to what the domestic guys are doing, it's really amazing that FedEx gets anyone to fly that stuff. Really cherry RFO trips can pay up to 10 hours a day and involve one revenue leg from HKG to MEM.

If you can deal with getting your schedule late in the month, maybe being on reserve a bit longer than your domestic bros, there really is no better job than 777 FO.

To me life is much better on the other airplanes if you're flying Domestic and move to Memphis. If I were a commuter I'd be on the 777.... Unless you want to get senior enough to bid double dead heads out of your home town. Some guys really like doing that.

For instance... Let's say you live in Kansas City. There might be a trip that starts off with a Commercial Dead head to Kansas City and ends with a Dead Head to Memphis. If you live there you just show up for work on Monday night and end up something like early Saturday morning. Meanwhile you get paid for Sunday as if you actually deadheaded to Kansas City. So it ends up being about two days of pay for Dead Heading to Kansas City which you never did.

Personally, I just bit the bullet and moved to Memphis. Now I can sit reserve and pick up a little extra flying here and there. So for the Domestic stuff life is VERY good if you live in Memphis and a little tougher if you commute.

So long as you can plow through night/day/evening swaps. Maybe its my age, but plowing through the circadian fog and the “blahs” comes with a lot of those nice hotels. Duty periods on hub turns are often longer than you find on Atlantic crossings or North Pacific ANC legs on the 777 or MD.

Trash and treasure....everyone’s got favorites. I like LIVING in Hong Kong. I liked FLYINg the MD trips more than I do these hub turns. A little week or two of day flying now and then did a lot for morale and attitude improvement. That said...its gotten better. SIG is trying and the hot meals on oven birds is a welcome improvement.