Upgrade times
 

The airline profiles on this site say that the most junior Captain at FedEx was hired May 2015. Is this actually true? What would be a more reasonable upgrade expectation?

Thanks,

Joe

Awarded, but probably not off to training for another year. FedEx upgrade bids aren't all that frequent.

And this person will be at the bottom of the Capt list for quite some time.

My wag at a more realistic time is in the 5-7sh years ballpark for most.

But if you live in Memphis makes it easier to sit reserve at Midnight. Just have much less control over your destiny

Never mind.......... rtfq

classmate (we were hired in 6/2006) is 757 cap, and is bidding 10 from the bottom of the left seat

I think we have pilots hired in the last 2 years that have 757 Captain awards.

That said ... they probably won't go to training for 2 years. After that they have 3 - 6 month of training (including IOE) and will sit on Reserve for years to come. Junior on Reserve means 15 - 18 nights a month on 1 hour "alert."

It's not the GREAT DEAL that it sounds like. This is a really good job with the opportunity for rapid upgrades but being junior on ANY airplane on Reserve would s*ck really bad!*?

Just remember, don't let the Maserati salesman drive during your test drive;

Driver Of Maserati Killed Called ?Wonderful Young Man? « CBS Denver

As a previous poster said, equipment bids around here are far less frequent than at other places, but that's not the whole story. On a relative size basis, we bid the same amount of seats as any other airline in a given year, but we just typically do it in about 1.5 bids a year vs the multiple bids you might see at a Delta or United. To date the big loss for us with this system is that it makes it harder to time your training in a way that's most advantageous for your life schedule and/or seniority. We have a new system coming at some point that will have some affect on that depending on how the crew force uses it on a practical basis-a big unknown at this time. The biggest unknown however is our 757 & 767 training program. That is the real reason that the training times are so long from award on that fleet and it also affects training for other fleets as well. Typically we hold one big bid a year and the most junior people train within 10-12 mos from the close of that award at most. Because of issues with the 756 though, that's been pushed out somewhat. In various stages over the next year or so, I expect that the gap will narrow as more simulators come online. Then the next wild card will probably be how excited the company gets about being able to up the utilization on the 767 and how ambitious they decide to get with MD10 retirements because of it.

In the end the guy who said 5-7 is probably right, but I wouldn't be floored if a combo of events between more sims and bidding for training allowed some lucky folk to slide into the 2-3 year range. Stuff like this happens at all airlines over time and rarely do we see it coming beforehand.

Things change.

When I was a new-hire it was taking 6 years to make 727 captain. It took me 14 years to make captain at 100%.

Of course, Age 65 had a little to do with it....

One thing I would add to DL's post. It is possible to trade training dates in our system. For example I have a friend who moved up his MD-11 upgrade class by about 8 months. Granted he is at the bottom of the list and will be for a looooong time (he lives in Collierville).

The upshot is that a relatively new guy could bid the 75 left seat and be in training fairly quickly. The training letter is just a starting point.

I heard a rumor while at training that Sonny B says expect a bid in the next two months. I consider the person that told me to be a reliable source, but the crew bus driver hadn't heard it yet. So there's that.

The EUR FDA bid FCIF said to expect a bid in the spring.

-UA