I didn't know Ups had a presence in Greece. Where does FedEx operate the 75 out of?

 

Ah. I thought the other poster was implying Star Airlines was running freight for UPS through Greece. I figured that meant that Euro cabotage laws prevented UPS from doing that flying or that UPS couldn’t get the route authority.

FedEx used to fly CGN-ATH-TLV on the 757. ATH then got shifted to the MD. Route was CDG-ATH-DBX. Not sure what the service is now.

 

We could fly to Greece if ups wanted to. They tend to route the aircraft in such a way as to include a cabotage leg on star's and I suppose mng's flying in a way that preclude us. A few years back when Bob Miller was running the show I remember something happened that put Greece and Iceland on the horizon for us to fly. UPS quickly put the kybosh on that.

FDX has route authorities from their purchase of Flying Tigers that have a lot more flexibly as far as cabotage goes. After ww2 pan am, twa, and Tigers had those authorities. I know united got the pan am authorities and for a while operated a hub in LHR, but code sharing with the star alliance put a stop to that.

Finally as a point of information, unless it's changed, the only routes we are guaranteed under our scope were the trunk routes and the original 727 city pairs. The rest ups operates if it makes sense to their business plan. Believe it or not, they do like to fly as much on the brown tails as they can.

 

The Athens route stops in Munich on the way, so I believe the CGN-MUC leg is the killer on that one.

 

Excellent write up. Thanks for the history. Always interesting to hear how those routes get divvied up and who wins the route authority battles. Seems like most of the international fifth freedom rights are hard to come by these days.

 

Yes and imagine a foreign airline able to do the same in the USA.

 

Is it still called "scope" here at UPS if our brown tail airplanes are being flown by people not on our seniority list?

 

yes. Management flying is tracked and penalized.

 

While I'm far from one of the union "cheerleaders", I'm happy to give credit where it's due. Improved language on mgmt flying was one of the big wins of the 2016 contract & it's not one that's talked bout much or something that the NC/EB gets a whole lot of credit for. Scope is certainly one of the items where our contract is truly "industry leading".

 

I have plenty of gripes right now, but scope isn’t one of them. We (the IPA) has done a good job of minimizing the flying lost to management and sub-contractors. Unfortunately, cabotage will always give the company a way to work some sub-contractors into the system. Our primary concern currently is the broader economic slump in the shipping business. Lack of demand for our product is crushing growth and career opportunities.