2BEER

I just completed year 2 at FDX and here are my thoughts with consideration to the fact that everybody’s situations, goals, and expectations are different.

First year sucks and there’s no getting around it unless you’re going to drop mil leave. Depending on what fleet you are in and where you’re willing to live it is possible to avoid hub turning- I avoid it like the plague (I moved to base) but I acknowledge that I probably have not seen my last hub turn. If you jump ship you sign up for yet another “first year” somewhere else. This career is a marathon, not a sprint, settle into a pace and be patient. FDX is not immune to failure like some people seem to think but it’s also not on the brink of collapse. I detect a hint of disappointment in your post that maybe FDX doesn’t “feel” like the place you built it up in your mind to be. I dealt with that too. It’s just a company... they pay me and I’m happy. My QOL is defined by my time with my family and friends and I build my work schedule around my life, not the other way around.

If you feel like you really have to jump ship, the sooner the better for obvious reasons. Personally, unless I see some major dire warning signs they’ll have to pry this job from my cold, dead hands. Good luck whichever direction you choose.

FXLAX

No, that sounds like an international trip.

I’m not sure 100% because it’s only anecdotal, but when I talk to guys here, day flying is generally considered any domestic trip that has leg(s) starting around 6am or later and landing before around midnight. For example, a trip that shows at or after 6am, flies to a hub, turns and lands before midnight. And international trips don’t count as it’s going to cross many time zones and turn around your body clock anyway. International here doesn’t seem that much different than at passenger airlines except that here it’s more like multiple international trips strung together with layovers that are much longer, and hence the trips are longer.

DirtyPurple

I’m roughly 3 years into FDX. I’ve got military friends at every flavor of airline, all across the country. Each of them has some positive and some negative things to say about their particular carrier. It’s really cool to see how each of us manages the life/work balance with regard to commuting or living in base, which airplane to fly and when, etc. I’ve discovered through listening to them…there is no one right answer for any family. There are many great ways to make it work, and as was stating previously in this thread, it totally depends on what I value when making those decisions.

If someone else values different things in life, I’m in no position to judge them right or wrong. It’s just different. And I hope they are senior to me. 😉

And with the FDX doom & gloom thread, I feel the same way. If someone feels spooked because the news is telling them we will be taken over by Wal-Mart or Amazonian robots, I’m not sure it’s my place to change their mind. I don’t know the future, but my eyeball tells me I’m in a great position with a great company. It does have issues, to be sure, but overall, we invest in infrastructure and fleet modernization to keep up with whatever the geopolitics and the global economy will give us next. The problems I see from the flight deck perspective are small, not massive cracks of a crumbling mega logistics giant.

I’ve got buddies who currently have multiple offers from other majors, and are swimming in the pool of 200 @ FDX. “What should I do?” I tell them to start at the first airline that hires them. There is no real decision to be made until two airlines have offered CJOs. I have friends in the last 5 months that have either turned down FDX interviews, or who have been hired at FDX, and then started at UAL/DAL/AAL. They read the news, and politely tell me they’d rather ‘take the sure thing’ with the pax carrier than chance it with the crumbling remnants of FDX.

Again, not my place to change their mind. I’m rooting for all of us to find the place where we can have a high QoL, and I realize that cargo simply isn’t that place for some people. But I’ve told them, if you leave your carrier every time there is an economical speedbump, you’d never get more than 5 years of seniority at any one airline. It’s all a cycle.

To the OP: I couldn’t imagine flying with pax & FAs for the next 25+ yrs, and doing narrowbody type flying for most of that time. No thank you. I’d prefer to ride out the inevitable airline cycle in my widebody international life. I’m not saying it’s the grandest, but holy crap, it’s as close to a rockstar as I’ve seen or heard of. You can easily weather the narrowbody night hub turn storm you currently find yourself in…you are literally one system bid away from changing that. If you just can’t tear yourself away from drooling over the massive retirements at a pax carrier, more power to you buddy. Hope you find a situation where you’re not second guessing yourself.

BrulesRulez

Buy that Zoom stock now! Video conferencing is the future.

Huck

"the crumbling remnants of FDX."

All because our profit was not as high as predicted. Not losses, profit.

Hope those ninnies stay away from here. Better tell them that the pax carriers can be a dam scary place too sometimes.

MEMFO4Ever

Except you know that this career is going away eventually. Probably cargo before pax, but either way it is a matter of when, not if. Starting to consider that possibility before hitching one's cart to a specific horse is good planning IMO. Purple is no different than any other public company. It makes sense to keep it running, until it doesn't.

Huck

Actually I don’t know that.

I was an aerospace engineer before I was a pilot, you see.

The financial incentive is just not great enough. That’s why trains still have two crew members......

Thrust Hold

Not for long:

https://fortune.com/2019/07/29/auton...ns-challenges/

klondike

With all due respect and with no offense intended- Some of you guys really have no idea sometimes. Comments like this tell me you have never worked for a Regional airline. I’m not going to argue that being junior at FedEx doesn’t have a suck quotient, but being junior at any Regional is a REAL suck that trumps any suck that FedEx might have.

Ihateusernames

Being junior at the garbage truck company sucks even more. They are comparing FedEx to an airline of "peers". Unless you consider a regional a peer. Sounds like you have no idea.


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