At Fedex, what type of routes and/or aircraft go senior? You have fleet differential pay, so can I correctly assume that most of the senior folks go to the MD-11?

If so, are the routes international, or domestic, Hawaii, or??

Thanks!

You might be surprised! Pretty sure your assumption doesn’t work at FredEx.

A large # of pilots are commuters and where you live dictates a lot of the seniority issue.

For instance, there are (or least were, when I pulled the plug 2 years ago) LOTS of folks in all seats of the 727 who were VERY relatively overall senior, because that jet flew week-on, week-off trips out of their home city.

I was #3 in the Boeing, but could have been in the top 20% of any of the wide bodies, higher in some domiciles. Chose not to bid out due to quality of life issues. The fact that you are flying out of your home city, get your 1st bid choice on lines every month and vacation bid - and a great quality of life, has a lot of folks doing strange things.

Then there are always the folks who will chase the dollar at any given opportunity, and will bid the next highest seat at the first opportunity. So, seniority at Purple is murky at the best. I will bet that seniority is all over the map, because each individual has their own set of hot buttons.

Everyone has their little niche at FedEx. Drew was right: some chase the bucks, some chase lifestyle and being home a lot, and some chase international flying. There are trips and equipment at FedEx to make everyone happy. The airline is so large now it shouldn't come as a surprise.

Like captain_drew and Sasquatch said, seniority's all over the place. The guys at the top and bottom of each list are probably there for a driving reason (a particular niche ), so they kind of skew the overall seniority picture. I think that a better picture of the overall seniority would be to look at the middle (median) pilot in each seat. That's still probably not anywhere near 100% accurate, but without doing a statistical analysis (which there's no way I'm going to attempt ), here's how our seniority pans out as of last month's bid (senior to junior in each seat):

For the senior pilot in each seat:
(1) DC-10 SO MEM
(2) MD-11 Capt MEM
(3) A-300 Capt MEM
(4) DC-10 Capt MEM
(5) MD-11 Capt LAX
(6) 727 Capt MEM
(7) MD-11 Capt ANC
(8) MD-11 FO LAX
(9) A-300 FO MEM
(10) A-300 Capt SFS
(11) DC-10 FO MEM
(12) MD-11 FO MEM
(13) 727 FO MEM
(14) 727 SO MEM
(15) A-300 FO SFS
(16) MD-11 FO ANC

For the median pilot in each seat:
(1) MD-11 Capt LAX
(2) DC-10 Capt MEM
(3) MD-11 Capt MEM
(4) A-300 Capt MEM
(5) MD-11 Capt ANC
(6) A-300 Capt SFS
(7) DC-10 SO MEM
(8) 727 Capt MEM
(9) DC-10 FO MEM
(10) MD-11 FO LAX
(11) A-300 FO MEM
(12) MD-11 FO MEM
(13) A-300 FO SFS
(14) MD-11 FO ANC
(15) 727 FO MEM
(16) 727 SO MEM

For the junior pilot in each seat:
(1) DC-10 Capt MEM
(2) MD-11 Capt LAX
(3) A-300 Capt SFS
(4) MD-11 Capt ANC
(5) MD-11 Capt MEM
(6) A-300 Capt MEM
(7) 727 Capt MEM
(8) MD-11 FO LAX
(9) A-300 FO MEM
(10) MD-11 FO MEM
(11) DC-10 FO MEM
(12) A-300 FO SFS
(13) MD-11 FO ANC
(14) DC-10 SO MEM
(15) 727 SO MEM
(16) 727 FO MEM


That's probably waaaay more information than you wanted, but there it stands. You can see that some of the rankings at the senior and junior ends don't really make sense, but that could just be a single person who's sitting in that seat for a particular reason.

Hope it helps,

Z

great info zulu