kenblankenship

Nice to see a friendly face! They need to bring that show back. The rotating surfboard of death was before its time.

707Type

Right you are, Ken!

Adlerdriver

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZFlyer

Thank you for the explanations on that.

To be clear, if you hold a line that allows for dh to your trip, are you losing that time at home just the same as you would if you were a non-revving commuter getting to/from work?

Maybe a different way to say it is:
You get paid for the trip as if you flew it as scheduled, actually deadheading out of and/or into domicile. Nothing you do during a deviation affects the pay.

If you have a trip that starts with a DH to the city in which you live, you stay home until you need to depart in order to report at your local airport one hour prior to the revenue flight. If that is 15 hours after the trip technically started, then you get 15 extra hours at home while you’re already “on the clock”. It’s not a normal practice to have a trip built with a DH right into a revenue leg in the same duty period. So, there is usually a legal layover between the deadhead arrival and the outbound duty period.

If you have a trip that starts with a DH to another city, then you do whatever is necessary to be in that city no less than 8-12 hours prior to report for the outbound revenue flight (18 hours for intercontinental DH). Depending on the circumstances, you may have to leave earlier than when the trip technically begins, or you may capture some extra time at home. Either way, the pay starts when the trip begins on paper. I think most guys leave themselves some backup flights as they would for a normal commute. The nice thing is there isn’t the threat of a last minute bump off the jumpseat since you have a ticket.

GOOP95

Fedex is hand-picking folks for the MD11. With carrier or heavy experience. You won't have a choice but to decline and risk picking from what's available the next day because the MD11 guys class up a day before.


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GOOP95

Have you heard anything yet? They wait until two weeks before class date start to notify you.


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707Type

I got an invite to the class on the 26th because they had someone drop out. As far as I know, the rest of the guys I interviewed with are still waiting for a class date. I got the call about a month out, so other guys in the class must have had even more notice than that.

AZFlyer

Adler and FDXLAG, thank you, that definitely helps me understand your system better, though to be honest, I don't think I correctly posed the question that I was curious about based on your responses involving pay/compensation/required lay-over rest for this system, etc. (though it's definitely interesting intel).

What I should have asked was: Do the scheduled dh's affect the number of scheduled days off per month compared to a guy who doesn't have to do any commuting at all?

If you have to be in position 8-12 hours or whatever prior to your operating leg, my reading of this is that you are losing days off/time off at home just the same as a typical pax carrier guy would who is commuting in for his trip, but the upside with the FX system is that you're not sweating it out hoping for a free seat on board your commuting flight.

Am I in the ballpark now?

I've been in the airline biz for about a decade now, but I've only just started flying for the airlines, and I live in base, so the in's and out's of commuting in general are purely academic to me. I swear I'm not actually mildly retarded. Thanks for indulging my curiosity.

Adlerdriver

I guess you're in the ball park. There are some nuances to the various scenarios, but there are times the DH trips have the potential to get you some extra days off. But the main thing to correct you on is that you're usually not losing days off with the DH trips.

The footprint of the DH trips include the DH and the time required to be in position prior to operating. Look at that time period like the first leg of a trip beginning in domicile through the end of the first layover. You're just not operating the first leg (and if you live where the trip deadheads to, you're already at the layover). So if your schedule was Mon-Sat, week on/week off for a month, you'd have two 6-day trips (12 days of work) scheduled that month. Say the two trips were identical with a front AND back deadhead. If you lived in the city you were scheduled to DH to Monday morning and DH from Saturday night, then you would have most of Monday off before going in that night and be home Saturday morning with no further duties. Are those bookend days technically "days off"? I guess it depends on you. Most guys will be trying to bank some sleep before going in Monday night and will probably be messed up most of Saturday coming off a week of nights. But, you're home, getting paid. So, some might say they only worked 8 of the 12 scheduled work days, since they were home most of Mon/Sat for each trip. On your calendar, the trip will go from early Monday to late Saturday, so you decide.

If you're deadheading to/from another city with the same schedule, you're correct. You're probably not getting extra days off. However, you're not losing scheduled days off either. You're getting into position on the days you're actually scheduled to work rather than using real days off. So, the above scenario would still result in 12 days of work with little to no time away from home that isn't true paid work time.

Commuting to MEM to start a non-DH trip may require burning part of a true day off, unpaid, the day before the trip starts just like a pax guy on a non-commutable trip. Clear as mud?

AZFlyer

That actually cleared everything up for me quite well! Thanks for taking the time to explain it. It sounds like a valuable aspect of your contract that is worth sustaining.

I've still got a good bit of flying to do before I'm competitive for a gig like FedEx, but learning about these sorts of details is valuable as I continually shape my long-term goals around the intel I gather.

Cheers!

PressOff

Huge thread, so forgive me if this has been answered. On the application, it asks about willingness to accept either the Hong Kong or Cologne FDAs for a minimum of two years. If I choose no, am I ruled out? Both commutes would be near impossible for me, and my wife has a serious medical condition which precludes us from moving. We must stay where I live currently as she needs a reliable support structure in place since I am of course gone for long lengths of time.