I answered his question and asked him one.

 

Boiling down the issues with Scope to wet leasing out of MEM is taking a far too narrow view of the issue. For several reasons, Atlas 747's are probably not the most cost effective way to move Purple freight. The long term contract with Atlas was signed when Purple couldn't get airplanes fast enough to meet customer demand. That demand has subsided. This is just my opinion, but, I do not think that Atlas 747's operating out of MEM are the biggest threat to Purple because of associated penalties among other things. The real threat is that a large portion of the Purple network is not protected by Section 1. Any international flying that does not touch the USA can be outsourced with no penalty. Purple is currently only operating about 25% of the intra-Europe flying. That means that 75% of the intra-EU network is not being flown by Purple pilots and there is no penalty at all. There is nothing stopping the company from continuing this outsourcing model throughout the world. How many Purple pilots jobs are at stake if EU is further outsourced and a partner is found to provide the intra-Asia lift? FDX ALPA is using case law to say, "sorry, we can't do anything about it so let's just hope for the best" while our friends at IPA have had success in defending their contract language that protects all legally allowed flying for Brown pilots. Purple ALPA has no interest in pursuing this type of language.

 

cool so eventually FedEx will fly smaller planes in Europe and Asia instead of paying a 3rd party? They won’t use 3rd party indefinitely, That’s not cost effective. If they are serious about this new network bull**** I wouldn’t be surprised if they buy a **** ton of smaller airplanes in the long future and our proportion of wide bodies in the total fleet goes way down.

 

That's a possibility but in my assessment it is unlikely.

For the sake of conversation, UPS has this type of flying protected through their Scope language, Purple does not. FDXALPA would like everyone to believe that protecting this type of flying isn't possible and cite some case law but IPA has had great success in enforcing this language in their contract. Ask an IPA friend to tell you about the CGN-IST-TLV flying. FDXALPA isn't interested in pursuing stronger language in Section 1.

 

What is wrong with flying smaller airplanes? I wish we had 737s so we could be doing that flying instead of ASL. Yes, the proportion of WB flying goes down but the WB flying doesn’t. But I rather we do it in smaller airlines then not at all. In any case, we don’t choose the machines management needs to create revenue. We just operate them, whatever they are. But if we had scope protections, we would be doing more of that ASL flying,

 

it’s not, or they would do more of it. That’s my point.

scope needs improvement. We sit on the other side of the table from the company, EVERYTHING need to be improved. Belly freight will destroy our jobs, not Atlas 747s. Try to capture that in scope, and enforce it, not easy. Ask anyone at Atlas how much UPS freight they carry every day that isn’t wet leased. UPS Supply Chain Solutions I believe is what they call it.

 

It may or may not be cheaper to have an Atlas 747 fly our freight, but it definitely is cheaper for ASL 737s to fly our freight, and it definitely would be cheaper to have Atlas 777s fly from CDG to CAN to KIX and back.

 

Agree on ASL, absolutely not on the Atlas 777. IMHO this new network has more to do with belly freight than other cargo airlines flying our freight.

 

They are doing more of it. Management’s business strategy has recently changed and that is why it has increased. It’s obvious that it is cheaper otherwise our 757s would still be doing all the flying ASL is now doing. I’m sure there is a beneficial element of control they like from doing it in house but I would bet that we wouldn’t like where their equilibrium is on that cost benefit analysis on control versus expense. Everything in scope needs improvement, not just wet leasing and belly freight but also crew compliment.

 

Why don't you see it on with Atlas 777? their operating cost per 777 is lower than ours by a large enough margin that we could save a lot of money by outsourcing to them.