whalesurfer

We are definitely not overstaffed. Trip-trading is a contractual benefit and yet more often than not our trip-trade requests get denied due to “insufficient reserves” or due to “sufficient reserves” [yes, they can do that too :-( ]
How is that being overmanned??

fightandflight

Didn’t say we were - I was wondering how it benefited the pilot group if we hired to the point where there was little to no JA or open time....what I would consider over staffed. I understand the point some have made regarding “proper” manning. I still think that if we had to error to one side or the other I would choose slightly undermanned, earlier upgrades are great, but furloughs are not. Thanks for the responses.

whalesurfer

Very good question. If every person only flew his or her schedules we’d have MANY more captains here and we’d have over 3,000 pilots by now..

Do NOT use common sense logic when it comes to being overmanned and possible furloughs if/when the economy goes south.
Case in point - when the furloughs were announced we’d just posted a +1 billion dollar profit. (Don’t remember the exact number).

That’s right, a huge profit and yet we still furloughed. So, in my view, we should focus on good, less-fatiguing schedules, quality of life and as many upgrades as possible because in the end that’s how most of us will make our money here.

If the company chooses to furlough at some point they’ll do it whether we think we’re over- or undermanned. In fact, they’ll probably do it just because they can.

cessnapilot

They would hire more. There would be more reserve lines. There would be more captain positions. There would be more copilot positions. You would move up.

fightandflight

Funny, because there is an actual discussion in the FedEx forum right now on how they wish they hadn’t hired so many. I’m sure there is a healthy balance there somewhere.

FTv3

I think it’s fair to knock the UPS air district for not being particularly well run, especially from an employee perspective. Perhaps you could also argue corporate HQ in ATL hasn’t made some of the best decisions in administering the air district. However, in terms of running, building, and growing their aggregate business, I don’t think you can call them fools, tools, or second fiddle to Fred.

TNT, well that turned out to be not such a bad outcome didn’t it?

Aircraft purchases - maybe UPS’s tortoise pace on acquisitions was smart in the long run (vs FedEx overagressiveness). And, their resistance to fly stuff around (FedEx model) vs ground proved superior.

US Postal Service contract - unfortunate loss but it’s not hurting us and some argue it’s better (in some aspects) we are not tied to it.

Amazon - TBD. But do you guys really think they are naive to Amazon and the threat / or lack of, they pose to UPS’s core business? Which, by the way, Amazon is not currently making much, if any, headway into. We do a heck of lot more than package delivery. Think B2B in terms of inventory management - that ford plant next to worldport is no coincidence, how is amazon going to steal that business? Break up that relationship? Just in time inventory (JIT) business on the grand scale isn’t going to be lost to the cheapest bidder - you guys really think Ford is going to just jump over to Amazon? They don’t have their own airline, nor ground network, and they mostly outsource their operations to contract carriers and gig economy workers. A major manufacturing company is going to trust the delicate process of JIT to an operation like that??? GMAFB.

What’s that other classic example we all give in our interview of what UPS does? The one about the camera maker, Nikon or cannon, I don’t remember which: they make the camera in Asia, make the lenses in S. America and ship both to Louisville where ups puts them together in a retail package, warehouses it all and THEN delivers them to specific retail stores. And I recall that UPS even manages the inventory side of the camera company for that product so it’s UPS doing everything post production. Winning that business is going to be really difficult and a long, long sales cycle if they are ever even successful. And that’s just a basic example of the kind of stuff we do. Supply chain solutions goes in all kinds of interesting directions in very complex relationships with the customer. And that is just one slice of the UPS business pie. Retail B2C package delivery is arbitrary and easily juggled from company to company based on price. Sure, Amazon is a threat there, but did you guys ever consider that maybe what’s best for UPS and Amazon is to be in a partnership, as Abney recently stated? Maybe FedEx actually fumbled and lost that business and bowed out instead of having some brilliant secret plan for the future?

Anyway, to the larger point, you can criticize UPS (corporate, not the airline dept), openly fear they will screw up our future all you want with this Amazon nonsense, but UPS has the numbers, earnings reports, consistent growth, profits, and continual overall success to suggest they are far smarter than the idiots you guys think they are. If nothing else, I think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt in this case that they may very well know what they are doing...