Oh you poor soul. I must have hit a nerve. Described you perfectly. So is all your wisdom and knowledge going to volunteer? I think a few positions are open. Im sure our entire pilot group would be graced by your presence in a position that could make a difference.

We all know you wont step up though. Its much easier to post on a forum and critique those actually doing the work. Sad soul your post has shown you to be.

 

Step up and volunteer. I think an officer election is open. You can run the whole show. Be the big guy you think you are on the internet. Maybe you could convince a couple notorious cry babies on APC and JetFlyers to run for vice and some other open positions.


pssssss……. You will actually have to do something but complain on the internet though. We all can’t wait to have your wisdom and knowledge in our leadership positions and getting an awesome contract. You know, because you could do so much better and all.

 

Of course you are happy with the product that ALPA has provided you. You're a management troll.

#1. Bids HAVE NOT worked out fine. We gave up Passover Pay, which was the single greatest giveback in C2015 financially. The new Section 24 was supposed to provide us with smaller bids and the ability to choose or know when you were going to go to training. It provided NONE of that. In fact, it's worse now. As Nightflyer said, the company now controls which classes are offered so no Slot Denial Payment for you if there are no classes offered. They continue to push out big bids. And without knowing when they will or will not offer classes, and knowing who above you or below you will be held in their seat until the company is ready to let them train, you can't plan. Not even the most senior guy can plan. The new Section 24 took away the penalty payment for abrogating seniority. Now we have people stuck in places, the 757 for example, while new hires go above them. I told the NC when they briefed this at the Hilton that this wasn't going to work as they thought and that dude looked me right into my face and told me, "You don't know what you're talking about." I was right. Again. You just had to read the TA as if you were the company. Family Guy and the rest of the NC were schooled. So freaking stupid they were.

#2. We still have one of the worst Reserve systems in the airline industry. Our PBS software for secondary lines caused us to lose over 50% of our reserve lines, resulting in much lower manning, and now line holders can't drop trips due to insufficient reserves. Another huge giveback. And yet, we have people arguing and suggesting that the new system is better. It's hosed us. Every fleet. It made changing your schedule extremely difficult. The crazy part is that we still don't know what the final software as negotiated in C2015 is as the company and union have yet to release it. THIS IS NOT INDUSTRY LEADING !!

#3. Our CBA is industry leading because of legacy bankruptcies and COVID. Had it not been for COVID FedEx's contract would have been leapfrogged by the legacies. UPS's contract is now industry leading. Even the Contract Comparison on our Union's own website shows that total compensation is higher in in many situations at the Legacies and UPS. And those charts don't even account for .... ahem .... Profit Sharing. Delta (I am not sure about UAL or AA) have already crossed back into the black so they will have PS come this February. It certainly won't be as high as in the past, but they'll get it.

#4. If anyone were to judge ALPA based on grievances, TA promises versus reality, contract violations and long term outsourcing, I don't see how they could be happy with ALPA. FedEx is outsourcing long term flying that should be flown by FedEx pilots.

Dude, you have to be extremely ignorant, or a management troll not to understand what I just wrote. TALK to the FOs who come from the Legacies. I have. I've spent a lot of long hours at night discussing our contract and what they had at others. Many of the pilots I've flown with had some type of guilt, more like "had I known XYZ I would not have come to FedEx." The only folks extremely happy with the job are the military only pilots as a crap sandwich would be good to them. Go on, ask your FOs who were at regionals or Legacies. The grass isn't greener here because of people like you.

 

I agree with most of your statements except,

Reserve at the regional that I came from wasn’t better, but was worse. No ability to see the leveling list and once assigned a trip crew scheduling would almost always keep revising the assignment until the end of the reserve period. The only thing better about reserve at the regional was that for airport standby they had to assign a trip that departed within the standby period. They’d sometimes call 20 minutes prior to the end of the standby period to assign something, but for those that knew the contract we could just say there’s no way to get to the gate, complete all required duties, board and depart in 20 minutes. Nice try but no. I’ve had them call with an assignment 5 minutes prior to the end of 1330 - 1830 standby when another pilot is on ASBY in 5 minutes… I’ve also also slept until 0730 on 0130 - 0630 ASBY and when I called they say hold on let me see if there’s anything out there I can assign. That’s not how it should work. We shouldn’t be getting called to get released. If we must have ASBY then 5 hours with no assignments then we are automatically released.

However, the legacy I was at didn’t even have ASBY or a set call out time on reserve. The wording was nice and vague, in the pilots favor. The contract said we had to report within a reasonable amount of time. For a reserve assignment it was just do your best. You wouldn’t get a letter in your file for showing up 1 hour 45 minutes after the call. The legacy also has a seniority system for reserve requests and then the traditional leveling list. It was really nice that if there were 4 terrible trips in open time and 1 really nice trip, and you needed to get current then you didn’t have to mark yourself first fly and see what you got. The seniority system allowed the most senior reserve pilot to say I’d like to fly this trip but if I can’t get that, then just follow the leveling list. You could also mark several trip preferences in order. Any trips that didn’t have reserves requesting to fly would be assigned following the normal leveling list order.

The legacy also had an app that would alert us to any schedule changes automatically without having to constantly login to check. The app would give quicker notifications than phone calls, but it wasn’t required to use or to click the acknowledgment button. It was still crew schedulings’ responsibility to ensure pilots were notified.

 

Respectfully, we shouldn't even be comparing regionals to FedEx. And FAR117 made reserve at passenger airlines much favorable ... but not at FedEx. And some regionals do have much better systems. I have been called out with a minute left of my reserve duty. I've also been called twice in the last ten minutes of Airport Standby. Don't be fooled by the reserve leveling smoke and mirrors website.

 

I worked at a regional that had most of those things. Could see leveling, automatic release from airport standby or any trip assigned on reserve or at 6pm on the last day of reserve, 4 hour airport standby periods, can’t assign two consecutive airport standby periods, cannot assign more than 6 airport standby periods in a bid month, no airport standby on the last day of a set of reserve days unless you volunteered, a trip preferencing system, no requirement to pick up phone or check schedule once on a trip, no ACARS reassignments, no reassignments unless it was from crew scheduler or crew tracker, open trip alerts, instant trip trading, no check-ins, a commuter friendly commuter clause that covered both air and surface transportation, no sick call points if provided a doctor note. That’s probably most of the highlights.

 

ExpressJet did have it good! Too bad United always **** on them

 

I ask these questions ‘cause I’ve read about these topics and curious about them:

1) You folks mention SEC lines. Is this Fedex building blank lines with dropped trips for training, vacation, conflicts, etc? How does this affect reserves? And how is this a “PBS” style system?

2) What makes your reserve system so bad?

Thank you.

 

I don't know what you mean by SEC lines. FedEx does build in-based Airport Standby's (the dumbest thing in the airline world, but don't tell FedEx Flight Operations that). There they put Memphis based pilots in hotels in ... Memphis. Why? Because they think they can get you to the airport faster than you otherwise could. When the build these standbys it makes it nearly impossible to drop a regular line trip because of the maximum open time (or unfilled trips) rule.

FedEx has PBS for their Secondary Lines. Secondary Lines are flying lines that are constructed from the leftovers from folks who had a Regular Line but conflicted part of it with vacation, training etc.etc. All of the leftovers or unfilled trips get put into a PBS system and pilots put in their preferences and then are awarded a line ... sometimes comprising of only trips, trips and reserve blocks, or just pure reserve.

Reserve totally sucks at FedEx because every reserve day is a short call out and you must be in Memphis. Yes, there is 24 hour callout at FedEx but the company violates the intent of that and calls you in for multiple hotel standby periods -- so you end up in Memphis anyways. At a legacy, you can sit most of your reserve days at home and can have a beer or other adult beverage of your choice on your reserve days. And FedEx keeps the manning so tight that right now you're going to fly the majority of your reserve days.

 

It is fiscal year June through May