I think your personal experience is not the norm. You must have just had some bad luck flying with guys coming off extended sick, vacation or some other absence. If they're flying the line regularly, the only way a Captain would be hurting on landings is if they chose to be. I seriously doubt that's a systemic problem. Maybe a few outlier's personal agenda, but probably not something most MD-11 FOs are dealing with on a regular basis. Not letting the FO have any of the landings is usually a symptom of something else, but you already assured us that's not the case.

I did a document search of the new contract using RFO. Other than finding out the word "peRFOrm" appears over 150 times, I could not find anything that indicates a change allowing Captains to "bid RFO trips". Do you have a contract reference for that?

 

There are Capt RFO only lines in the ANC bid pack. This is due to the FO shortage that crew manning created with the big excess.

 

I agree, to a point. I see some Captains with a blanket "no RFO gets a landing" policy when common sense may dictate otherwise. The fact the RFO is a 8XXXXX number and on reserve/VTOs doesn't come into play with some of these guys. I agree, if the RFO is senior enough to manage his schedule and can obviously bid flying trips then maybe a question as to why they're short on landings may be in order.

This bit me when I was on the -11. I had a 60+ day military deployment which left me close on landings. The month I got back, of course, I get a custom line, and we all know how good they are. Reserve... RFO trip. I need a landing to avoid going to the sim and losing a flying trip the following month. I RFO out to Asia with a captain, and I was telling him my story. It turns out, I was RFOing with him at the end of the trip back to the States. He said he'd give me the leg back. Well, the next week comes along, and we're getting off the bus at the jet and I mention to him, "remember you said you'd let me have the leg back?" He looked at me and with disgust said "oh... you want the landing?" I said "yeah, back in XXX you said I could have the leg back." "We'll see..." he says.

I get up to the cockpit after the walkaround, and he basically tosses the release at me and says "weather's getting bad in XXX, I'm taking the leg." I look at the forecast 1500 OVC/3 miles. Really? If you don't want me to have the landing, just say so... don't make up some weather BS just because you don't have the balls to tell me no.

When we get to XXX clear and a million. Does he offer me the landing? Nope. He did offer me his hand when we were parting ways. He got a "whatever" and a view of my back. He's the only guy that was on my no-fly-list. Dick.

Later I looked at my calendar for the previous 12 months. I had one, count 'em, one, RFO trip.

 

I'm going to send up the "BS" flag on this one ... I just don't believe it's true?

I flew the MD-11 for 18 years. I frequently flew RFO trips and spent YEARS on Reserve. As an f/o I was sometimes short on landings. When I mentioned it to the Captain they were ALWAYS nice about giving me the extra landing. When I upgraded to Captain I saw the problem less often but I also flew a much higher percentage of domestic MD-10 trips.

If you're honestly seeing this problem, maybe the cause is looking you in the mirror each and every morning? This sounds like some sort of personal vendetta to me ... you didn't fail to pass upgrade training did you?

MM

 

That option has always been there if the folks in charge of manning pork away their job. Paying Captains to RFO is something the company does out of necessity, not as a regular practice. Iwa made it sound like this was some new thing allowing Captains to bid RFO trips if it suits them.

His whole scenario really doesn't sound plausible as a regular problem most guys are dealing with. Very strange.

 

LA as well.

 

Well Mayday Mark. I've obviously never had the honor of basking in the glory of your esteemed presence. I'm sure I would have remembered it if I had, since it would have been a noteworthy experience for sure. We definitely have more than our fair share of great men and women at FedEx, but it is an amazing ability indeed to draw multiple conclusions from a single paragraph without being in possession of any facts whatsoever. Anyway, it appears to me that: 1. You are flat out calling me a liar, 2. Questioning my character, and 3. Even indicating I have had problems in Training. Those are amazing assumptions indeed to draw from what I wrote.

You are wrong on all counts of course, but please don't take my word for it here. Go ahead and contact me personally if you dare. I'll pass you the pairings in question. We can then discuss my spotless training record here; and finally I can ask you in person why you thought it was acceptable to attack me in the manner in which you did.

Meanwhile, what I wrote stands and nothing you can pull out of thin air can change that. Captains I have flown with have taken all the landings on a trip to manage their own currency. It is their right of course and no one questions that. I went non-current once because of it and I merely bring it up as another factor or dynamic to consider when the senior here question why FO's sometimes have trouble staying current. Raise your little flag if you want, it changes nothing.

 

I fly 777 f/o trips all the time and don't get 3 landings. Trips can be 10 days long with 5 or 6 legs, and the captains take at least half, sometimes more. Put a vacation month next to that, and you're going to a 3 and 3. (Because once you get the notice you'll be non current, you gotta go soon or miss out on tweaking your schedule down the line.)

I needed just one landing to get reset earlier this year, and the captain took both legs to and from Europe. He said he needed them though a check of his schedule showed otherwise. Plus he should have gotten quite a few more that month. I ended up picking up a trip to get it, but there's hardly never any short tripss to do that.

 

This was covered by an FCIF moons ago but remember, it's a take off AND landing. When you log a landing it assumes and logs a take off to count toward your currency. That's why the sim is (was) called a "three and three". So, when you give an RFO the landing, you have to give him the T.O. too....so for all intents you're swapping roles between the F.O. and the RFO. I did this in the past, but never without consulting my F.O. and getting his approval, even though I was giving up my leg. "The weather looks good, the RFO can have the landing", doesn't comply.