BLOB

My experience prior to FedEx is military. My experience AT FedEx is what shapes my opinion on this issue.
1. I have been junior in my seat most of my time. Was hired just before hiring stopped in 2007. Didn’t get hired straight into a WB and have 500 below me within 18 months so scheduling flexibility is a big issue for me personally. Not whining about that but it shapes my experience here. Being junior I have had to use our flexibility in trip trading to have any sort of decent schedule. My version of a good schedule is simply working when I want to...being home when I want/need to. Anything that diminishes our schedule flexibility is not good in my opinion. There is such a huge difference between a junior schedule and a moderately senior schedule here. Our ability to Trip trade is what has made it good in spite of being junior in my seats.
2. The company will not go out of their way to help us maintain week on week off schedules or schedule flexibility if 117 goes through. They will absolutely do what is best for them to protect freight and control costs. They will recoup any additional costs of 117 at our expense. That’s how they get bonuses!
3. Not union bashing. I’d rather have ALPA than nothing. However just because they say 117 will be better I don’t blindly agree any more than I blindly assume that what the company says about 117 is true. I’ve seen enough unintended consequences come out of ALPA negotiations with FedEx. They often fail to anticipate how the company will actually implement contractual language. Additionally our MEC officers said they cannot predict what 117 will do to our lines. This was said last week at the hub turn meetings. That does not inspire confidence that this will improve our lives.
4. The MEC said the legislation that removes the cargo cutout has a 3% chance of taken up by the Senate this year. It’s very low priority. It will make it there at some point but the MEC officers think it’s mainly meant to be a distraction and a tool to test our unity. Much like the VB, our level of support for 117 is largely dependent on various demographic factors and certainly far from unanimous.
5. If you are fatigued, make the smart decision and call in fatigued. You get paid for your judgement.
6. Coming from a 117 pax airline that primarily does not fly in the critical period does not give absolute insight into how it WILL be implemented at a cargo operation with a significantly higher percentage of night flying. There is no pax carrier that has a the same percentage of night flying as us. Yes they have some night flying but it simply isn’t an accurate comparison. Aside from $$$ how do you think they got the cargo cutout. They effectively convinced the congress that the impact to cargo airlines is different enough from the pax airlines.
My 2 cents...

seefive

Well said. Agree wholeheartedly.

BlueMoon

Government mandated changes, is federal law. There isn’t a reason they need to be negotiated, company has to comply with federal law. It also doesn’t given the company carte blanche to toss out section 12. Contract can be more restrictive than federal law (and is in many cases). The opposite isn’t true.

Delta seemed to be able to keep their RFO for flights of 8 hours or more for their ocean crossings despite 117 allowing longer.

All this is a huge “if” anyways, I don’t think 117 is coming anytime soon.

Sluggo_63

That’s the problem with fatigue, sometimes/often you don’t know you’re fatigued until it’s too late. That’s why 117 is prospective. It uses science to give the best predictor of human fatigue and prevents an airline from scheduling something that will likely cause a human to be fatigued.
That’s absolutely not true. The FAA decision to cut cargo out was purely economic, by their own admission. When the original NPRM was announced, the FAA was clear, “there are no psychological differences between pilots who fly cargo planes and pilots who fly passenger planes.”

After air cargo carriers vehemently protested the inclusion of air cargo in the proposed FAR 117, the FAA released the final rule. Cargo was cut out and in their press release, this is what they said. “Covering cargo operators under the new rule would be too costly compared to the benefits generated in this portion of the industry.” They went on to say “the projected cost for all-cargo operations is $306 million . . . . The projected benefit of avoiding one fatal all-cargo accident ranges between $20.35 million and $32.55 million, depending on the number of crewmembers on board the aircraft.”

BLOB

That was my point. The FAA agreed the cost to implement 117 at a cargo carrier is higher. Why? Because our system form IS different than a pax carrier. We DO fly more at night...so comparing how good 117 was at a pax carrier is not a useful comparison to the impact on our system.

Yes, our bodies are affected by fatigue just like any other pilot. I won’t argue that...But it simply came down to a cost benefit analysis. The benefit gained by going to 117 was not worth the cost. For the pilots who don’t necessarily want 117 as it exists for cargo, it is simply because we evaluate the possible gains as not being worth the cost to us.

You may not like the fact that it ultimately is a cost benefit analysis but every operation that does a risk assessment most definitely weighs the costs vs the potential reward. Science would support that never flying at night and only flying 4 hours per day between 9am and 1pm will decrease fatigue related accidents. It would have added safety benefit of allowing maintenance more time to fix our planes. However the cost to the airlines and flying public would be too great. That’s extreme yes but it illustrates the point. We can argue where the line of safe operations is relative to cost but to deny it exists isn’t based in reality.

I agree that fatigue is insidious. 117 doesn’t change that. You still may have to make the judgement call that you are fatigued under 117 due to a myriad of circumstances that still comply with 117.

pinseeker

I think you missed the point of the cost analysis. What was said was that the cost of changes for a cargo company to the potential benefits of preventing an accident wasn’t worth it because a cargo plane will only have a few people on board while a passenger plane will have potentially hundreds of people. Isn’t it nice to know that a Delta pilots life is worth more than yours because most of their freight loads itself.

So far, the biggest complaint I hear is that guys won’t be able to load up their schedule like they can now. And these are the same pilots you expect to say they are fatigued?

BLOB

Let me guess. How many of these are true?
1. You live in Memphis (base)
2. You are senior in your seat or have been most of your time.
3. You don’t need to trip trade to get the schedule you’d like to have.

These are all choices (sort of). However, the more of these you answer yes to the less you are affected by some of the negative consequences that may limit our schedules with 117.

Just because a guy commutes, upgrades at a point junior to when you have or will, and likes our scheduling flexibility as it is doesn’t mean he is wrong. He is managing his career in a way that is different than you. If changing the “rules” of the game impacts that negatively why would you expect him to support that.

pinseeker

Ok, I'll play:

1. No
2. Yes
3. No, I need to trade to get the type of schedule I want.

And yes, those are all choices, not sort of.

Now let me ask you some questions.

1. Have you ever exceeded 1000 X pay rate in income for a year?
2. Have you ever sold back vacation?
3. Have you ever had less than 13 days off in a month.
4. Which rules did you fight for that improved our scheduling?

Just because a guy wants to be a sky ***** doesn't mean that everyone else should look away from potential safety improvements so that they can continue to sell themselves. The more yes answers in 1-3, the more someone sells themselves.

Now, all kidding aside, we don't know exactly how a change to 117 ops will affect our schedules. The company said they will publish a bid pack to show us how bad it will be. What I would like to see is the union publish a bid pack from a prior month built off of us being under 117. They say that our current operation is largely compliant with 117, so let's see it. The company builds the pairings, so using the pairings from a past month should be a good indicator of how 117 would affect us. Forgive me if I don't believe the company will create a bid pack that reflects how good a change to 117 could be.

Noworkallplay

100% correct. The cost the FAA was talking about was the cost of loss of life. A 777 full has 250 to 300 people. Each person has a monetary value. In our case at FedEx we are not as valuable. Remember this was the argument of the management group who is telling you 117 is bad for you. Do you not see they don’t give 2 iotas about you. You are purely an insurance policy away to replace if you pile one in from fatigue. That was their argument in the costing phase of 117.

Now your passenger compadres have have all those other lives behind them so they are more valuable as a hull when they operate. When we take off boxes and freight are much cheaper to insure for a hull loss compared to an AC full of pax. So this isn’t more expensive for our management to implement it’s just a bigger percentage of what the possible loss would be if a hull loss occurred.

Noworkallplay

What? You moved the goal post again. Now you have come to the conclusion that our more restrictive CBA rules will be voided or lost in some way shape or form? Well that’s not what happened at the pax airlines when 117 was implemented so why would that occur at FDX?