FEDEX Benefits?????

[sf340flyer]

What are the travel benfits at FedEX?? Can spouses "jumpseat" on Fedex planes? And for the pilots is it the same as before with listing 2 weeks in advance and you are asured the seat? Does seniority decide who gets the seat? If you live in IND, can you commute to MEM (if you are a junior guy) to start that night or should you try the people movers during the day?

 

[fdxdisco]

Spouses are not allowed to jump on Fedex aircraft, unless they are Fedex employees. When you sign up for a jumpseat you list as either business, staging (your coming to work in Memphis), or personal. This is also the priority. Anyone listing as business can bump staging and so on. Your flight gets locked in 2 days prior to your jump seat i.e. you can't be bumped. (not sure if this applies to personal jumpseating). Seniority does not help you get a jumpseat. It's first come first served based on aforementioned listing. You can and should jump into a trip on a Fedex aircraft. This is actually preferable. If the Fedex flight your jumping on gets cancelled or is diverted and you miss you flight it's no harm no foul. This is not true if you jump on a people carrier. Jumping in on Fedex though is tracked (or will be soon) by scheduling. You must be able to make duty limits for your outgoing flight. This can be a problem if your on an international trip. Not so if you jump in on another carrier.

Hope this helps
disco

 

[sandman2122]

I thought the personal jumpseaters were "locked in" 72 hours prior, a lot of good that does crewmembers trying to stage to/from work short-notice.......

 

[fdxdisco]

Sandman, You could be right about the 72 hours. I haven't looked at the jumpseat rules in a while. I do know that staging does get locked in. I'm just not sure about personal.

Your right, crewmembers that need to short-notice jump can get screwed. That goes with with being able to live somewhere other than Memphis.

I don't think most commuters find it a big problem though. You've got to have a backup plans. Either jumping on another flight earlier, using a different airport or jumping on another airline (if you can). It may even involve buying a ticket on short notice (read expensive). I've seen guys do this trying to get to Anchorage. You get the idea, backups to backups to backups.

disco

 

[brillig17]

48 hours for the personal jumpseat, unless it's been recently changed.

As for last minute, doesn't happen unless you do it to yourself, in my experience. Pick up an extra trip and you'd better have checked first!

Staging and Business have equal priority for reservations, one can't bump the other.

 

[fdxdisco]

Brillig
I went to the horse's mouth and your right about priorities, sorta. As far as reservations go staging and business are the same, unless they have an equipment change then business gets put back on first.

I was basing my knowledge on getting bumped off of a staging flight for a "quote" higher priority. Used to happen to me going back and forth to Tucson. Basically, another one of the buds listing as business wanting to get home and I got screwed.

If I'd only known then what I know now. Wait a minute, I don't know anything now.
disco

 

[sf340flyer]

Thanks for the info guys. I'm guessing you can atleast get id90s for spouses and family? Is there any other nonreving on other airlines??

 

[Falconjet]

travel benefit

sf340flyer: the main travel benefit you will have at FedEx is a stable, livable paycheck from month to month. You can afford to buy tickets and actually have a seat assignment and not have to worry about getting bumped from your flight. You will likely earn enough frequent flier miles from all of your deadheads to take your spouse on a trip per year. Otherwise, the travel benies for your family are pretty limited. To summarize, however:

SW offers us a terrific deal on space available travel. You pay 70 bucks for a ticket (through FedEx corp travel and their $13 service fee) that is good for 90 days. You can use it on any flight but you are standby. I used them to fly from BNA to SAN this past spring and got the last 4 seats on the flight we were hoping for both ways.

Not exactly a sure thing and fairly stressful, but it worked out. I learned my lesson and for our next family trip on a limited time schedule I just bit the bullet and bought some tickets. I make enough money to buy an airline ticket if I really need to be somewhere at a particular time. I am personally trying to break the mold of all airline pilots being cheap bastards!

NW offers a 70% or so discount on their full fares, but I have found that with the fare wars that we love to bitch about on this forum going full strength, its usually cheaper to just buy the ticket at the best discount you can get with an advance purchase.

So you see the family travel perks at FedEx are pretty limited.

YOU, however, thanks to the graciousness of most of the pax carriers, can jumpseat on just about every carrier out there. Right now all we can do to reciprocate is offer reduced shipping rates to the carriers (which we do) and continue to press for the resumption of offline jumpseating as soon as possible. The TSA and FAA are the ones not allowing us to reciprocate, not the pilots or the company. Although I must confess that this does not appear to be a huge priority of the company either.

So again, even though I have never personally jumpseated off line, I must thank all of you at the pax carriers for continuing your genorousity to us box haulers on behalf of those who do and for myself for when I get the opportunity. THANKS!

FJ

 

[sandman2122]

More Jumpseat "rules"

If any FedEx commuters care: Just talked with "Carrie" in jumpseats and she said "Personal" jumpseaters are locked-in to their seat 72 BUSINESS hours prior to departure. Up until that, they can be bumped by business, staging, decade and of course LCA's or the FAA. Inside of 72 BUSINESS hours, they can only be bumped by emergency, FAA or LCA's. (she said something I missed about equipment changes too).

Anyway, the worst case could be trying to book a Monday jumpseat because a personal jumpseater is "locked-in" sometime the previous Wednesday = 72 BUSINESS hours prior. This has happened already once to me (on an early Memphis return trip) , but that's the breaks of commuting........I'm in HRL today on a layover typing on the wonderful T.V. internet so excuse any puncuation errors.....yahoo.

 

[klhoard]

HRL Layover

How is the LaQuinta??

 

[FedExpert]

Better re-read the jumpseat policy. Business cannot bump Staging unless there is an equipment change which reduces the number of seats available. Those nice ladies in jumpseats don't like to follow these rules and sometimes have to be called on them.

 

[Tomct]

Hey guys, just looking for some info. Is it true that you have to have three letters of recomendations from actual FedEx pilots to even get a looksee? I only know one and am very interested in Fed Ex!!
Thanks