I for one have been sick of the Company's tact with 4.A.2.B since day one, but after looking at the July line values it has become personal. FDX Flight Manglers are sticking it to us and this is WAY beyond "job protection"! They are benefiting for their poor decisions on our backs. We should have 757 pilots in training at twice the current rate if they can't evenly distribute credit hours.

Is this "Furlough prevention or delay?" NOPE, simply unadulterated COST savings.

BID INFORMATION for B757-MEM
JULY 2009

CAP F/O
The average BLG is: 92:49 92:49
The RLG is: 88:59 88:59
The R-Day value is: 4:41 4:41
High Line Credit: 99:06 99:06
Low Line Credit: 86:59 86:59
Average no. of days off: 17.8 17.8

BID INFORMATION for A300 MEM
July 2009

The average CAP BLG is: 72:30
The average F/O BLG is: 72:39
The CAP RLG is: 69:40
The F/O RLG is: 69:40
CAP R-Day value: 3:40
F/O R-Day value: 3:40
High Line Credit: CAP 78:36
High Line Credit: F/O 78:42
Low Line Credit: CAP 68:30
Low Line Credit: F/O 68:30

I agree 100%, it has gotten beyond ridiculous.

Back in Feb when 4.A.2.b was invoked credit hours variance wasn't so bad... now it is just down right awful. The company is doing whatever whenever they they see fit and we have no recourse it seems.

I take part of the blame for having such loose language in the contract but enough is enough already...since when does a narrow body FO make the same as a wide body captain

Some of the 75 freight could easily be going to the Bus and yes they could handle more 75 students in the schoolhouse...IMHO

My best guess is this will finally go before an arbitrator in September. If FedEx loses this they may be force to make a lot of reimbursement. Then the guys that had high BLGs will be complaining that those that had low BLGs got paid for doing nothing. We can only hope.

Shack dammit. Dammit added as "shack" is considered too short a reply.

The only issue with the schoolhouse... I know personally several 757 flexes that have been excessed off the airplane. If they don't ramp up the training soon... they'll have to hire more people to teach. Kind of makes a person wonder why they excessed sooooo many 757 FOs (150 plus) if their BLGs are so high. Seems to me that they don't have enough of those folks.

Cost Savings pure and simple

Just as there is no "the Air Force" or "the Navy", there is no "the FedEx". These decisions are not made in concert, they are all made individually and without coordination. The flight management people make their decisions and the training people make theirs, and sometimes it works out while other times it doesn't.

I think a better explanation is (just like the Air Force) a group of bean counters make a recommendation to the boss and everyone else has to react to it.

Same difference, but I can guarantee that flight training was not in the meetings when the decisions were made. My time in that dept showed me that they were at the end of that whip.

Comparing our operation to the Air Force is mixing metaphors. How many squadron commanders or Wing Commanders would keep their jobs after some of the issues with manning or mishaps we have had? Neither organization is perfect...IMHO the Air Force and military are often too quick to look for scapegoats. FedEx, on the other hand, doesn't seem to feel any turnover is required even during challenging periods. A big mistake many of us make is equating what we knew for 7, 10, or 20 years and thinking the airline works the same way. It doesn't....

I didn't say it was the USAF. I said there is no "the Air Force." When you hear "how could the Air Force make him a pilot", or "why would the Air Force promote him", etc. They speak as if the Air Force is a single entity. There was a case where the Eagle community sent a weak player off to an AETC assignment. After said AETC IP had to endure an FEB, it was heard "the Air Force will never send him back to the Eagle." As if there is an over-watching power that screens all decisions and ensures that they are made in the interest of the service. It doesn't happen. The assignments personnel sent him back to the Eagle when they 3-yrs were up, just like they did for all of the other AETC IP's. The majority of the decisions made in the USAF are made with a very localized point of view, we can't even get generals to make their decisions for the good of the Air Force - even (especially) they have agendas.

In that regard, the analogy stands. When flight management makes a decision, they make it from their very localized point of view. When they determine who gets excessed or awarded a bid, they do not take into account the desires of flight training. Anyone who has spent any time in flight training knows that training and ops might as well be in separated companies. When flight training decided to put half of every class in the front seats of the Boeing in '06 because they couldn't train them all in the back, they did so without regard to the millions of dollars it would cost the company in passover pay for no added productivity. When the aircraft acquisitions people were working the 737 buy, then the 757 buy, they put no thought into ensuring the cockpits of the aircraft were standardized amongst the fleet, they made a localized financial decision (at least flight ops got to make some input into that one and change the results).

Just as they did in the Air Force, people talk about FedEx doing things and coming up with all kinds of conspiracies. In reality, they are giving the decision makers too much credit. There is no conspiracy, just bad decision making.