You're listening to fly by night. A podcast
by Fedex Pilots for Fedex Pilots.
Brought to you by the Fedex Master Executive
Council of the Airline Pilots Association. And now
here's your host Nec Communications chair, Captain Chris
lee. My guest today is scheduling committee chair,
Captain Marty Harrington. Welcome back, Marty. Thanks, Chris
back again.
We're getting closer and closer to the October
bid month,
Has management relayed anything to you about the
flight schedules?
Short answer is no.
Back in April, April first, 01:24.
I'm reading now from Justin Brown.
He wrote now is the time to look
ahead. The end of the current Usps agreement
on 09/29/2024
will necessarily lead to system form changes when
we discontinue providing service for the Usps
and implement a more flexible and efficient domestic
network.
Our business operation teams have been evaluating and
planning for this possible contingency through the negotiations
process.
We will communicate about these network adjustments in
the coming months as we move closer to
the conclusion of the agreement.
We are 3 months later,
and we have had no information from management.
On what system form look like
come October. So he mentioned a more flexible
and efficient domestic network.
And as of now, you have no clue
what that means.
No.
I have received no information about the October
flight schedule from management
at all, 0.
In an earlier podcast, you mentioned even some
of the planners over there had to sign
Nda
Correct?
Why asked that exact question that they didn't
sign
an Nda?
They received an email saying, you will not
disclose any of this information to anyone outside
that's not on the email thread.
And because of that now, there's rumors that
you or the Ps
have signed an Nda.
In 25 B it talks about privileged information
that we receive in the course of doing
business.
18 19 years ago when I first joined
as a reviewer for the Ps t signed
an Nda. All the reviewers
sign an Nda prior to moving up into
a builder. So everyone that's part of that
process, signs an Nda.
On the information that we gained during the
course of Build week
we don't disclose that. So there could be
something about a appearing and it could end
up changing. Are we get it fixed or
we dispute in the dispute process.
We don't wanna jeopardize any of that process.
So I signed an Nda
18 years ago about Sig information for Build
week.
And that said, party, you haven't received any
information on the October build and just can't
talk about it.
I have received no information on the October
system form changes.
Well, Marty, when
is the company required to let you know
what's going on in October?
As we talked about previously,
our process is a 13 day process. We
get preliminary pairing.
Later on, we get final pairing after a
conference call,
the bid month
for October opens on September t. We will
get the pre for October on August 20
third.
Once again, I've lob to management,
we would like to be in that process
prior to their obligated date of August 20
third, we wanna be able to be in
the process of building those pairing.
If you recall back when we would did
the Sunrise sort,
Those preliminary pairing they were just dropped on.
We didn't get through review them. We didn't
get screened them prior to. We had more
than 90 disputed pairing that month.
We got a resolution afterwards, but we had
to go through steps. We had disputes. We
had conference calls on the disputes. We explained
to the pilots why we're disputing this we
don't want that to happen again. We would
like to see ahead of time, what they're
planning
so that if there's fatigue issues. If there's
build ability issues,
anything that goes into building the bid pack.
We would like to get a head start
instead of seeing that
on their obligated date of August 20 third.
And when the Sunrise soared issue happened, it
created a significant amount of work.
Absolutely. And and the pilots we had a
conference call,
I think there were hundreds of pilots on
that conference call and we had and we
explained to them why we're doing it. The
reason,
and I think we got a fair
fix afterwards, but it took time after we
had to live with those disputed pairing for
at least a month before we got a
resolution to that.
On a previous podcast, we talked about extra
pairing in the Md 11 that dropped into
open time.
And now we've had 50 plus pairing in
the triple 7 drop into open time,
which always
raises the concern that management's is trying to
drive the same dam. Can you talk about
that some?
We address this on the md
The c... The corporation is operating differently now
post Covid than they did pre Covid.
Changes are coming more and more frequently as
they try and maximize
the airplanes that we have, utilization. We definitely
have the the staffing to cover,
increased credit hours.
But in this 1, we went back
The dart we received talked about oh they're
trying to artificially lower the sam.
And I wanna tell all the pilots.
We track the sam very closely.
We had our agreement with the corporation on
how they actually calculate the Sam. And if
the company does try and if manipulate the
Sam,
I will be the first person to know
about it.
The 200 or so credit hours have popped
into open time,
would only move the Sam a tenth of
a percentage point, up or down, 200 hours.
You need more, roughly 2000 credit hours to
actually move that number an hour up or
down.
Overall system wide, we have over 200000
credit hours, so 200 is really just a
small fraction of that. So we're monitoring it,
and the only real number every pilot needs
to be
concerned with is 64.
Right now, the Sam is around 69.
If it goes below 64 for 2 consecutive
months, that's the trigger
that goes into 42 c. We're not anywhere
near that right now.
Well, let's talk about the build week now.
You're in town for the August field. How's
that going?
August is a 5 week.
We're not big fans of 5 week builds.
They're usually little awkward because we tried to...
It's hard to build week on week off
at 5 weeks.
But the pairing set we got
was reasonable to build lines with
month over month... Now this is a trend
we've seen. I've seen the past 3 months.
And back to the whole why the things
change so much. Why are they changing so
much
throughout the whole process.
We got the pre for June,
July,
August.
The same things happened every month.
Finals are almost...
I would say thousands of hours more than
what we get in the pre.
For June,
month over month, it was roughly flat, but
the premiums had us down a percentage point.
Went up to almost flat when we got
the finals. Same thing in July, we were
2 and a half percent lower in July
than were in June, and that ended up
only being 1 percent decrease.
The premiums for August, they were down,
I believe roughly 1 percent,
month over month, and they ended up actually
increasing by half a percentage point.
Overall, since January,
we're really flat, roughly only a couple thousand
hours point down from January. I would say
we're in that range, which we've been in
outside of the March pop, which I talked
about prior.
We're in that range and the numbers have
remained steady.
So far, we've seen no loss in the
postal freight
as we've been told by management,
we have that contract up until the last
day of the contract, and I have seen
no drop off in any postal flying as
of today.
The India flying the India triangle that we
lost in the Md
as we've talked about before that has gone
away.
The other India routing
that was created in pairing. And now it's
part of the bid pack, we we continued
to see that operate and be placed on
pairing.
So we're glad we gained some flying and
we lost some with the India triangle.
You've had some questions related to
airport and hotel standby in the system. Can
you talk about that?
So we lost up in Indy, the Indy
hotel standby lines.
We were asked about it, we just weren't
given a definite answer on the removal whether
it's gonna be permanent or not.
The reason they removed for July because we
didn't have any indy night hub turn pairing,
and there was no need to back that
up with an Indy hotel standby.
Those type of changes I see happening time
and time again.
As the flying shifts from 1 airplane to
another. We had a question asking about airport
standby
out in
La and then Ontario.
System form changing the Airbus is not even
flying out to the West Coast as often
as it used to, so they don't require
that
standby anymore. They moved it to, I believe
a a Dallas standby.
We had changes to Md 11 standby.
These changes are gonna continue throughout.
Right now, there's smaller changes and we're gonna
probably see much larger changes come the fall.
We expect to see changes in standby and
sequences as the company moves the flying around.
And is the company just moving flying around
now for efficiencies? Or do you think part
of the plan for October.
Previously, the company was very,
say conservative changing things.
I think
Covid impacted that, and I think the new
leadership
at the higher level has changed that. I
think they're trying to change things to be
more cost efficient.
And we're seeing a lot more changes than
we used to see. And like I said,
even the volatility on the this the flight
schedule.
We get the pre,
a week later we get the finals and
we start building lines with them. When we
get the finals,
as we're working with the finals on our
software,
they go to trip services and they put
the trip services and hotels on the pairing
at that point in time.
But if we wanted to change a pairing
this week on Monday,
it's really too late. When we get the
finals,
Most of the time the finals are the
pairing we get in the bid pack.
But behind the scenes things still change,
we could get ed flying here or there
The secondary line process takes roughly 5, 6
days.
In that process, they when they take the
snapshot, They're very limited on changes to pairing
at that point in time. So when we
see pairing just drop in open time when
open time release happens,
During that week, there's no changes to pairing,
and then the pairing... It seems like, oh,
they just came out when open time comes
out. But their software
is a bit inflexible.
Any updates on the retirement and resignation?
In June, we had 19
retirement
and 2 resignation. The resignation as we've said
in the past podcast, have gone down from
a high,
the end of 23, down to
past couple months, 3, 3 last month was
2 and June had 2 as well. So
total,
we had 21 pilots
leave the property.
What feedback are you getting on your new
scheduling app? We've gotten some good feedback, would
like to see more people try it? I
think
I'll be around during Me week. I'd like
to show some pilots how that operates and
how it functions. It's really a neat tool
for pilots to use. There's a lot in
there about fatigue and how to assess fatigue
as well.
So I'd like to see a more pilots
use the app. A couple things that we
did get feedback to, Josh Carter, the creator,
the app.
He immediately fixes these issues right away. He's
stellar programmer,
and we're happy to have him working for
us. In several of these podcasts, we've talked
about the anchorage to butte. Can you give
us an update?
Absolutely.
So today, we had a meeting
following the Cb
myself,
the Chairman, Jose Ne, my vice Chairman, Mike
P, we met with Robin Seb sebastian, Andrew
Mini,
and Abby Jake.
So we went down 25
b dot f. Final resolution of scheduling disputes
sig neutral track.
And this meeting is to try and come
up with a solution to this dispute.
We brought our case in front of the
system cheap pilot,
and I am optimistic we will get a
resolution to this dispute.
I say it every podcast. As of right
now,
we don't have it in writing for management,
but I believe we're gonna get something soon.
And I believe it will help the pilots
in the
issues and pairing design that we've seen up
in anchorage.
Another popular question we have on the podcast
deals with upcoming system bids. Any updates?
We talked to the planning department just this
week,
and the rumored,
October system bid
is a new rumor. That rumor is that
system bid is moved back a month
to September.
And
there is still no
bids set yet. So things can change. I
wanna say that. But it sounds like they'll
be expanding the Md d 11 role.
The plan and previously was to retire all
the Md 11 by the end of fiscal
year 28.
We see that date being pushed back to
the right So they're gonna have to staff
the Md 11
as it continues to thrive in the international
environment.
So
the September date would
give the company
the ability to put people into training
beginning of January.
And I believe right now, that is what
they're considering
is having the bid in September versus October.
And also,
I mentioned to management, I said, well,
if you're having a bid in September,
another reason why we need to see the
October flight schedule ahead of time. We don't
want a bid that month
where it's the first month and then we
don't get see the pairing and maybe some
are disputed or not or we have issues.
We wanna give the pilots. The most information
they can have to bid
and to
effectively plan their future here at Fedex. And
if they're now considering a September bid,
that could be even more evidence, they know
where this is headed,
and they should share that information with you.
Absolutely. I've said this in the past and
I feel terrible. I'm as frustrated as every
other pilot.
Pilots need to know ahead of time. And
I will continue to advocate for the pilots
to get this information sooner than later. I
like to know ahead of time what's going
to happen and I don't know right now.
But when we get this information, I will
have it out to the pilots immediately. We
do this podcast month over month, when I
find out the information, it will directly go
out to the pilots when I know.
Well, thanks, Marty. And thanks for listening. If
you have any questions, please go to our
website, FDX dot apple dot org and utilize
the dart link. And as always, be safe
out there and we'll see you next time.