Life in the purple lane...
There have been a few changes here, but I don't think that things are that different.
Utilization rates really depend on what seat you're sitting in. I can tell you that for the 727 Captains and FO's our utilization has been very low (In Feb I flew 4 times, 2 landings). In March it spiked a little because of the military activations, but it wasn't anything to write home about. The number of open trips is practically zero. The SO's were hit harder because they have a larger percentage of folks hanging in with the reserve/guard.
Security doesn't seem to cause too many problems except for what's going on in the pax terminals when we've been assigned a commercial deadhead. I go out of my way to only use FedEx to commute and to move back and forth between deadhead assignments whenever possible. The terminal security hassles coupled with a reduced commercial schedule plus greater reliance on the use of RJ's really make FedEx's jumpseats (IMHO) the better, more comfortable option. Our discount programs with the pax airlines aren't that great anyway so I don't use them unless absolutely necessary.
The internal jumpseat issues are contentious and still need a lot of work before we'll ever get to allow offliners back on FedEx jumpseats. There's still a long way to go.
