QOL w/ Night Hub Turns
 

Everyone is different when it comes to sleep patterns, but I am curious about how people adjust to this type of flying.

What is the typical on/off schedule and monthly credit at FDX on the 75/76?

How does the night hub turn schedule affect your days off in terms of recovery time?

Those of you who are normally/naturally "get to bed at 10pm" people, how is the adjustment to this schedule? Overall QOL?

Monday night/ tuesday morning(or first night) is brutal...after that you can handle it pretty well. The worst part of it is the last hour of the morning flight to your destination. If you live in base, recovery is pretty easy as you will be done by midnight (ish). If you commute, then you better have an understanding spouse that realizes you need sleep when you get home. Typically, it's a week on week off schedule, and having a week off in between commutes is what makes it worth it for people who bid those lines. Keep in perspective that the "good" at FedEx is time off/vacation...and it is needed. If the pay/benefits/retirement/vacation/schedule flexibility wasn't as good as it is, it'd be hard to fill seats at this place. It's a great place to work because we've been able to hammer out pretty decent contracts (my opinion, only) from the underappreciated union volunteers...enforcing it, however...

Typical pay hours are usually 70-75 8 months of the year, 85-95 4 months of the year. Most of all this has been repeated many times in various posts with varying opinions as well. This is one viewpoint from an average line guy(less than 15 years at the company, junior wide body CA)...

I tend to be more of a go to bed at 10 to 11 PM.

Been here 12 Years and done way better than I thought I would with the night stuff. That being said, I fly day time stuff as much as I can. If you don't care about days off, you can do about a 1/4 of the year doing day flying on the 757 at 50% Seniority or better. Or at least I was able to manage that. On the 767 it has a lot more day flying, but it is a smaller fleet so you need to be more senior to get it.

Regarding the sleep. I'm a commuter and typically commute down to Memphis the morning/early afternoon before a night trip. Go to the Crashpad/hotel and go to bed early, shooting to be lights out by 7PM. Sleep until 12AM-1AM then head to the airport for my trip. Once to the layover, I'd sleep again. I would get into the cycle of night flying fairly quickly during the week. At the end of the trip, rather than hub turning AGAIN just to commute home, I would go to the crashpad and sleep in. Get up the next day and commute home in the afternoon. My wife likes me better when I do that.

On a typical junior line holder/reserve line month, you are going to give up about 4 Days off doing that, maybe more, but, honestly, I felt so much better flying at night. I don't know how guys commute into/out of night trips, but many do. When I daytime fly, I come to Memphis on the evening jumpseat, go to the crashpad/hotel and sleep normal. Once I'm done with a daytime trip, I of course just commute home out of my trip. Another good thing about day flying!

Night flying doesn't really bother me. I'd rather fly during the day, but by doing what I mentioned above, I really felt pretty good. Sometimes you are going to be tired. If you are too tired, call in Fatigued. It happens.

Commuting sucks, and sucks more when you are junior. As you gain seniority it gets easier. But, in reality, commuting sucks at every airline when you are junior and gets better with seniority. Also, with Deadheads, the commute gets easier. Also with Deadhead's, our contract allows us to come in early to the layover city. If the Deadhead is a Monday Deadhead and I will be night flying I often take the last flight of the night to the layover city on Sunday and sleep in on Monday. That helps a lot too.

My advice is stay senior and don't chase the money. Just because you can make a lot of money doesn't mean you have too. Over my time here, I've stayed around min guarantee, for the year that comes to about 75 Hours of credit a month. (Averages of 68/85 Min guarantee over the course of a year). So, take the pay rate for years of service and do the math using 75 hours each month.

Try not to fixiate on the fact you fly at night. It is a night cargo airline. If you think it is going to suck to fly at night, it probably will suck. If flying at night is an issue (not certain if you are hired here or not) then FedEx probably isn't the place for you. There are some nice things about night flying and weekend layovers can be a lot of fun! Best advice, sleep when you are tired, eat when you are hungry and try to get a little exercise in the middle of that IF you can. I also make it a point to get an afternoon nap. That is huge for me when night flying. Again, fly daytime stuff when you can.

Personally, when I was especially junior, I chose to do "B" Reserve, daytime reserve, rather than hold a crappy nightime line. I also chose to fly afternoon out and backs (also known as a day trip or turns at other airlines) as opposed to flying crappy night stuff. Of course, doing that requires keeping a crashpad and maybe giving up some days off.

I'm into quality days off as opposed to quantity when talking non vacation months. Totally opposite when it comes to vacation months. I go for max days off during vacation. On that subject, I USE my vacation and NEVER sell it back. I don't get the selling vacation thing, but you can make money doing so; I just personally value my vacation more than money. I love to come in and fly, don't get me wrong, I just love my time off too.

I kept a crashpad for my first 5 years, got rid of it after that. Just use hotels now. Bottom line, I'd rather give up a few hours/few days to feel better overall. I was on the younger side when I got hired so I felt it was important to pace myself on the night stuff. That has been my logic in doing what I do. Hope that helps!

Here's another strategy...

If I have a Tuesday 0300 launch, I stay up as late as I can on Sunday night, until say, 0300 or 0400. Then I go to sleep in my own bed, and sleep as late as I can, say, noon or 1300. I go to the airport to catch my jumpseat, sleep on the way to MEM, take a 1-2 hour nap at midnight between my jumpseat and my trip, and I am good to go.

By staying up Sunday night, I am transferring the "first night" syndrome from the night I fly, to the night I am getting ready to go to work.

Technique only, but it works for me.

For the most part, night flying gives you longer time in the hotel. Day flying gives your shorter layovers, and longer time in MEM. I find that I get more sleep by flying at night, as I can't always force myself to sleep in order to get my 8 hours before my 0430 wakeup for my day flight.

Again, that's just me.

If I could be in charge for one day, I would ban all 24 hour layovers that launch in the am. You can't get good sleep twice in 24 hours, and the constant switching back and forth of your body clock wears you out. IMHO, it is just as fatigue inducing as an international trip that changes a bunch of time zones.

I can't agree more with the 24-hour layover. It's awful. Especially when you have them backed up one after the other. At another airline I once had SEVEN 24-hour layovers in a row flying over God knows how many time zones. I was a zombie.

Here's another strategy. Move to base. I've done less than 5night turns in 12 years. I've logged less than 3000 hours in 12 years. I bid day or reserve. I don't need to string stuff together. I've been home every Christmas and Christmas Eve. I've missed two thanksgivings.

Ps. I love 24 hour layovers. But I'd never string one together unless it had late report. I did a month of Tulsa turn SMF and it was two 24 hr layovers btb, but since tul is an 1 hr flight and had a 930am report it worked well.

This is why it's futile to ask about Quality of Life and schedules. Ask 2 people and you'll get at least 3 opinions about the same set of facts. About the only thing we can all agree on is there's a variety of schedules and a variety of tastes.






.

Seems like living in base is the ultimate hack. Just five night turns in 12 years? Are you on the 76 or A300?

Thanks for the info guys, much appreciated.

Avoided hub turns generally for 13 years with good success trading trips and working my schedule. It can be done, and you don't need to move to MEM to do it. However, if you LIKE IND, ANC, or MEM then it certainly is an option.

I sort of surrendered and moved to domicile, just not MEM. The FDA life isn't for everyone but sort of combines the "living in base" with "long international layover..."

Only warning is that if your family likes it prepare to sell off all your ****. You may be there a while... I am now condemned to traveling across the ocean to ski the rockies or visit family, but the goods outweigh the bads in our case. YMMV. Several HKG and CGN slots should be opening up if interested.

Oh..and I still despise getting in at midnight and trying to wake up at 2-3 to launch again. NEVER learned to like it. A trip than ends at 0200 or starts at 0400 is fine for me, but the "turn" part of hub-turn is always miserable to me. I work hard to bid around it, and when I can't I break out a calculator and figure out how long I'd have to work in the AF or another job to make the money I'm making that morning. Then I get my coffee, say a little prayer of thanks, and get to work...

Sometimes, I think we miss the obvious when we talk about things. To each their own, but a huge percentage of our pilots do hub turns all the time and in the grand scheme of things it isn't a huge topic of discussion for most of us. That doesn't make them a good or bad thing, just trying to give some perspective for those outside the company. It's like commuting, people get on board and **** and moan about it all the time, yet something like 65% of people commute industry wide and when I got hired, the CP said 80% of Purple people do. No idea if that number is accurate but the ballpark says enough. Most people have run the numbers for their own lives and chosen to commute for whatever reason. A lot of this stuff at the major airline level is a deal, but nowhere near a deal breaker imo.

CGN is intriguing.. As for the Memphis area.. Some nice spots out east, but it doesn't match my current area of residence, except for cost of living.. I hear CGN is mostly night hub turns, I am wondering if sitting reserve minimizes exposure to that schedule.

Ran into a friend a few months back that did CGN. He is now in HKG. He said reserve in CGN went senior and he couldn't touch it near the bottom of the FO list when he was there.

Back to the original question from the OP; Any night you have to stay up all night after an extended period of off days is going to be tough. Usually it is Monday PM/Tuesday AM due to system form, but it could be any night. As someone else said, you don't hear a lot of complaining, more likely, you'll just experience the quite of two pilots digging deeper into fatigue as they fly towards the end of their duty day. I don't think anyone really enjoys it, but night flying does offer similar advantages to a driver on the roads at the quietest time of the day, little to no traffic!

How do you avoid night turns? Does FedEx allow reserves to pickup open trips if there is any?

Yes. You can usually drop r days and pick up extra trips. The 76 is not good for this as open time, to me, appears slim. And if you are a 76 reserve guy you will get called out on a lot of the really crappy 75 trips.

When I have to do night hub-turns, or start an early a.m. flight, I try to get a combat nap in the afternoon/early evening. Makes a huge difference, at least for me. Good luck!

As an FO this isn't totally accurate. I have never been able to drop an R day as a 767 FO. That being said, haven't flown a 757 since September. They seem to try and save you for 767 flying if possible or maybe I've just been lucky.

-UA

*02/16 hire
07/16 activation
Reserve every month after
48k

If you are asking does FedEx have Aggressive Pick Up while on Reserve, i.e., at a certain time period prior to show time for the trip, a reserve can pick the trip they want to fly instead of taking what scheduling assigns? No, we don't have that, wish we did, United Airlines has something like that.

You can drop reserve days and pickup a trip as mentioned or try to manipulate your first fly preferences to avoid a hub turn. Depending on how short staffed Scheduling is you can be successful with that to avoid hub turning.

Work somewhere else.

Albie makes it sound like it's rather easy. For the 777 peeps are reserves used a lot?

It depends on the 777. If you have 2 separate blocks of RA days, you usually will work 1 block. If you only have one 15 day block of RA, you are going somewhere. RB is a whole different animal with many variables but goes more senior than RA. R24 is another word for hotel standby in Memphis.

UA
Is that a 02/16 start date?
So basically 5 months (20+ weeks) to activation?:eek:

Thanks for the stats!

My strategy (so far):

Last day at home: 0500 wake up, coffee coffee coffee until noon. 3.5hr drive to Memphis, dinner, sleep room. Lights out no later than 8pm with a :20 prior wake up call setup. Wake up call, coffee, check the release on my phone, look for friends to chat with, head to the computer to meet the captain about :05 prior to showtime. Airplane stuff, COFFEE, land. Breakfast and sleep with no alarm. Wake up and late lunch, coffee, go for a run, dinner and get ready to fly back. No more coffee after 2 or 3pm so I can sleep 2-3hrs in the sleep room during the turn, then repeat from the wake up call ad nauseum. Arrive back to MEM on the last day around 11pm and go to crashpad or hotel and sleep until 7 or 8 am and drive home.

If I jumpseat in I'll work it differently. Get up at 0500 and help the family get ready and out the door, go back to sleep from 0700-1000 and then catch a 2-3hr nap in the sleep room that night. I'll then stalk open time for a trip on the last day that has a backend deadhead that will get me home instead of J/S home (J/S home is no different than another hub turn, and I'll get home and crash until 2pm which I no longer want).

Sorry I got the threads mixed up. Read one, reply was more applicable to the first year thread. Anyhow, yes it took me a while due to an unexpected medical issue that required surgery during training. Company could not have been any better. My situation was unique and probably a worst case scenario. Know this, if something happens to you they will take care of you.

UA

The bad thing about nite hub turns at FX is losing the last day off that rolls into ur first day at work. You have to get a combat nap or get up super early to trick yourself into an early nap.

Sounds doable, and considering everything that FedEx has to offer, it is a good gig.

Basically, I'm trying to measure the balance between my current 121 job, which involves a 15 minute drive to work, living in an ideal city. Pay rates at present are well below market, but potentially large raises could be achieved later this year.

Here is a break down of my February bid month (it's a 30 day bid period)

16 days off, working 4 two-day trips and 2 three-day trips.

Of the 14 days that I work this month:
9 days have one leg,
1 day has two legs,
4 days have three legs (same time zone, or one time zone shift)
All day flying (not WOCL).
8 nights at a hotel.
Approximately 79 hours of scheduled FAR block.
Original credit 80 hours, but with delays, it is pushing 84 credit hours.

It is a lot of flying, but living in base and avoiding WOCL flying is a big plus. There is definitely more income potential, stability, variety of equipment/operations, etc. with FedEx, but I find it challenging to determine the value of higher pay with commuting and adjusting to the night hub-turn schedule.

You lost me at 79 hours of block.

You'll look back and wonder why you thought it was a hard decision...

Well, you zeroed right in on one of the big issues. Practically ZERO soft pay. It is a big negative.

That's how I want it to go down.