Someone told me that some of the cargo airlines don't fly weekends. Is that true? If so what is a typical schedule?

no it's not true fedex is a 24/7 operation

With my former company it was true! I would pull into San Diego on a Thursday morning, and layover until Monday night... with full per diem. Some lines would have my in Calgary on Friday morning and out on Monday night too. Not bad. True the pay was not as good as Fed Ex or UPS, but I had a pretty good schedule.

By the way on the long layovers at some layovers we could rent a car from Enterprise for about $15.00 per day. Had a real good time. We would treat some weekend layovers as mini vacations. Better than being a lock and click in the old hotel.

ABX still has a lot of weekend layovers. Most land Saturday AM and depart Monday PM. Also some 4-day versions, ie: Fri to Mon or Sat to Tue. Some cities have Sunday flights, some trips deadhead into or out of position, some cities are just through stations, so not all of the cities that we serve have a weekend. I agree with the earlier post, weekend layovers are one of the bright spots of the job. Makes up for some of that sleep deprivation.

It used to be true at FedEx too. .with that good pay .

Arrive at YVR on Friday morning with a 'scheduled' D/H back to MEM on Saturday. Then you D/H back on Monday to fly the scheduled revenue flight out of YVR on Tuesday evening. The Saturday trip laid over for the Monday night flight. Had similar sequences to SFO, SMF, SEA, GEG, PDX, RNO, BOI, SAN, ONT, BUR & LAX (only mentioning the 'garden spots' as many would not consider FAT a great place to spend 5 days )

This was in the day before the company decided to screw the pilots. They would pick up the hotel room and pay per-diem for the 5 days, saving them the RT airfare.

Many is the time I had my wife and little girls fly up north to join me and we would treat the Sat-Mon as a mini-vacation -as mentioned. When they couldn't, the crew would rent a car at the Richmond Inn, after we woke up from our naps on Friday and we would drive up to Whistler, renting a condo for $50 Canadian (about $14.95) per night and get 3 great (cheap) days of skiing and 'crew bonding'. . . over many Molson's.

We ended up buying a house in Tahoe as a result of a 5 day layover in SMF in 1976 -and SHOULD have bought that nice 3-BR condo at the base of Whistler in 1982 . .for $32,000 Canadian!

I kept a pair of skis and a mountain bike in the Bellman's closet at the Richmond Inn (YVR) for years -and in the warm months would ride down the the ferry at Twassan and spend the weekend riding around the Gulf Islands, exploring all weekend.

DAMN!! It was a good run! . .don't think the guys today are having ANYWHERE near the fun we had in the old days. . . management has torqued down the schedules and is squeezing out every ounce of 'productivity' . . to the detriment of morale and safety . IMHO

Yeah they sure were. I miss flying cargo. I'm back in the passenger game... more $$ but less fun.

There are still some weekend layovers at ups. Some of the nicer ones have disappeared (oak/bfi) but there are some places that you can sit for about 60 hours after arriving sat morn and leave mon nite.

Not sure how the other carriers work it, but we get full pay and credit and the perdiem for the layover. The idea of easy money appeals to me, although some abhor being away from home over a weekend. Being on the junior side, I don't mind drinking beer on the company's nickel...it tastes that much better!!

JMO

Pilot7576

We got full Trip Rig for those Sat-Mon layovers. . and for the ones with D/H’s in the middle of two trips, if the crewmember chose to stay in the outlying city, he got his hotel room and full per-diem . .and the company saved the cost of the RT airfare. Seemed like a reasonable swap-off to me . .but I think the weenie beanie counters thought that seemed like too much of a good deal.

And. . yes . . the brewskis ALWAYS tasted better . . and all the extra-cruuicular activity seemed sweeter . . on the company’s nickel!