Quote:
Originally Posted by Finessed
Did I say you could change your call sign? Did I say you have a bad relationship with FedEx? Did I say you were a regional? Did I say you were wholly owned? What the hell type of response is that???
Do you work for the PR team? I would say settle down, nobody is out for blood over a call sign, it’s called curiosity to why, which has already been answered.
And don’t lecture me on “If there is an unfortunate event the media will know” BS. Ask United who got the bad press with that non rev passenger who got beat to crap on a “United” flight.
I will try to help you. It is not at all unusual for a carrier when flying another companies freight in their system to use their call sign. Sometimes it is a commercial company such as Turkish, FedEx, UPS, and for a while we were doing Polar (until fortunately Atlas was able to file an injunction stopping that.) Sometimes it is military where you are given a call sign and a discrete code to use at a certain point.
In the case of the commercial ops. It is done so that the freight flows right into their system. Pilot contracts allow for this. The reception of the pilots in my experience has always been great and they are happy for the temporary help during peak. If you think for one second that ACMI pilots, who might want to work at these carriers some day, would do scab work, you would be mistaken.
Commercial contracts during peak come with their challenges. You usually do not book a lot of hours. You are usually late unless it is a postal run. You are late by design because you wait for any misconnect freight and then fill up volume with comat or empty cans. They fly you at a cost index of 500 and above which makes things interesting in the 747-400 at the very light weights that are common during peak Your climbs and descents are right at the barber pole and cruise is .87 to .88. Pilot attention is required and those that blindly programing the FMS and not intercede with manual autopilot inputs will exceed limits.
Military is another world all of its own with its challenges and benefits (I still think about my summer in Riga, picking up 15+ hours of flying every other day, and enjoying Riga during the off days.)
I hope this is of some help to you in understanding what a fun and challenging environment ACMI can be when you are at the right company.