FDX 2003 hiring

[CCDiscoB]

MD-11

Question for PurpleinMem who wrote:

...newhires should be sentenced to the MD-11....

Out of curiosity, why do you think the MD-11 would be a sentence for a new hire?

Fed Ex determines assigments by last four of SSN, correct? Is it from higher to lower?

 

[NightFlyer]

Yes, it's from highest to lowest.


NightFlyer

 

[VaB]

Re: MD-11

[[/B]
Out of curiosity, why do you think the MD-11 would be a sentence for a new hire?

[/B]

Some people think that MD-11 training is hard, and that it would even be harder for a new hire. I guess in the beginning of the MD11 program here at FedEx, some folks had a hard time and it wasn't has user friendly as it is now. Alot of the older guys here don't even think that a guy who has been here 2 years should be on the Maddog yet. Granted 2 years isn't a long time to be here, but if you can fly one plane you can fly another. The 727 FE training was alot harder than the 11 training.

Oh yeah, and to you guys that are senior to me that want to come over to the 11, it is really hard training and the flying stinks. You should probably go to the Airbus.

 

[profile]

Just to address the MD-11 training. There is zero chance that the company will put new hires in the airplane at this time, in fact, if they could find a way to do it, they'd like to limit who could bid it even more (i.e. can't bid it straight from an FE seat). Personally, if you were to go to it straight without some serious previous "front seat" experience, you'd be taking a chance. Going to a large widebody that has the fastest approach speed of any commercial jet in the world (sans Concorde), that has the highest automation possible, full glass, all the FMS stuff and hybrid FBW controls, and that operates literally world wide without limitations is a lot to bite off all at once.

 

[banned username 2]

Going to a large widebody that has the fastest approach speed of any commercial jet in the world (sans Concorde)

This just begs the questions...

How fast is the approach speed?

Is it so high because of the higher weights vs. the DC-10 or wing design?

Just curious...

 

[profile]

High due to the weights with essentially the DC-10-30 wing. Vapp flaps 35 at max landing weight (for us 481.5, it can be increased to 491.5) is 167kts. That is the slowest we can get and only gets higher if we have gust or strong wind additives. Flaps 50 can reduce that by 5 kts but the margin for the flap limit speed is so small that it isn't useful in gusty or windy conditions.

Incidentally, our clean min maneuver speed at max TOGW is 289 kts, so that is our speed from 3000 AGL until we reach 10,000 on climbout, where we accelerate to 355 kts IAS on our normal climb profile.

 

[VaB]

Like I said earlier:

Alot of the older guys here don't even think that a guy who has been here 2 years should be on the Maddog yet.

or maybe it's the old guys THINK the younger guys should have problems, because they did 8 or 9 years ago when the training wasn't that great. I was in the backseat for a year and went straight to the right seat of the MD11, and I didn't think the training was that hard and didn't have much problem. I know of several guys around my seniority that did the exact same thing, and they all did well and had no problem. It seems like it's the older guys ("Can't teach an old dog new tricks" syndrome) that have the problems.

That being said, I agree that there is ZERO chance of putting new hires in the the airplane. However, spending just a few months in the backseat and seeing the operations goes a long way to making the front seat transition smoother. What'll happen when we don't have plumbers in a few years, who knows.

Profile:

I mean no disrespect at all to your post, because I think everything you said is exactly right, and I'm not even remotely implying that you had trouble learning the airplane, it was just a generalizationof the attitude of alot of the captains that I've run into. Not all, but alot. "You've only been here at FedEx how long? and you're already in the right seat of the 11? humph"


Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens when we hire 1000 pilots next year, where we put them all. Now that we've wandered off the original topic sufficiently...

VaB

 

[md8pilot]

TWA

We went through this a few years ago at TWA when we retired the 3 man airplanes (727, 747, L1011). We hired directly into the MD80 and 717 (717 cockpit is nearly identical to MD11)...many who were still in new-hire training received 767 bids. Interestingly, the new hires had little trouble...it was the pilots who had spent a couple of years on the panel that had the most trouble. Of course, unlike the MD11 and 717, the MD80 and 767 are only partial glass.

 

[Huck]

Many moons ago, when ASA started getting RJ's, it was the first FMS any of us had ever seen. Most captains were coming off the ATR or BAe-146.

The word was, go home and look at your VCR. If it's blinking "12:00", don't bid the RJ....

 

[profile]

I agree that the older pilots had more problems. I found it fairly easy to transition, but it depends a lot on what your previous experience was. Many of those coming from back seats have had a lot of trouble. I'm glad you didn't. Personally, I love to hear about people in the right seat with less than a year with the company and I enjoy flying with new hires in general.

As to the post about the 717, the difference is that the MD-11 is a fairly touchy and fairly heavy widebody (about 150% the weights of the 767), with the international route system being extremely challenging, which is a big part of the problem.