Originally Posted by JackStraw

hell yeah 👊

cloudsailor forgot to mention “lives in Memphis, does out and backs, just don’t stop at red lights at 2 in the morning”

Originally Posted by busdriver12

Sure. For example, I know someone who had a major surgery scheduled, and it was during a time when reserve utilization was low. He bid reserve during the month that he had scheduled the surgery. Pulled a couple of days on reserve, called in sick for the rest of the month (was charged very little to his sick bank due to low reserve utilization). Called in sick for the entire next month, and the month after bid reserve, calling off sick for the last few days of the month (once again, charged very few hours to his bank). Totally legal, ethical, within the contract. Smart utilization of bank for a scheduled procedure. They will not charge your sick bank for the entire month when you've pulled a day of reserve, only for what trips you would have been assigned. This works especially well during those times where they are barely using reserves.

Originally Posted by busdriver12

Sure. For example, I know someone who had a major surgery scheduled, and it was during a time when reserve utilization was low. He bid reserve during the month that he had scheduled the surgery. Pulled a couple of days on reserve, called in sick for the rest of the month (was charged very little to his sick bank due to low reserve utilization). Called in sick for the entire next month, and the month after bid reserve, calling off sick for the last few days of the month (once again, charged very few hours to his bank). Totally legal, ethical, within the contract. Smart utilization of bank for a scheduled procedure. They will not charge your sick bank for the entire month when you've pulled a day of reserve, only for what trips you would have been assigned. This works especially well during those times where they are barely using reserves.

Originally Posted by pinseeker

The language changed slightly in 2015. Like you, I could be wrong, but I think that the union put out a message a couple of years ago about this exact thing. Now, I think that if you are sick for a whole block of R-days, you get charged sick for that block. The only reason I am bringing this up is to encourage anyone who plans to use sick this way to contact CE to make sure.

Originally Posted by busdriver12

Sure. I passed on thousands of hours of makeup bank to other pilots, and so did my spouse. In our case, we dropped large numbers of trips over the years because we had kids at home, so we built up huge banks. People who take mil leave often will also end up with huge makeup banks, more than they could ever need. And when you upgrade, you take this bank with you. The way that you can pass that bank to other people is to give them trips that you don't want. Then they can fly them, or drop them, and the hours go into their makeup bank. If someone is really helpful, they can pick up a bunch of crap trips in open time in that they don't want, give them to you on a one way trip pickup and then you can drop them, trade them, whatever, they're yours. This was very helpful during 4A2B, as you could pass hours from your makeup bank to others so they could work a decent schedule. Maybe it doesn't seem fair, but it made it so the reserves were underutilized (which I'm sure the Memphis folk appreciated) and people could earn a decent paycheck. I never minded helping people, the system works better when we help each other, win/win.

Originally Posted by StarClipper

Why would we have to trade? How about just make what we have better? The idea that we must give away something in other to get another needs to go away now.

Originally Posted by DLax85

Thanks - this makes sense with regards to a healthy "Make Up Bank".

You initially typed "…..Get a friend who uses mil leave and has a healthy sick bank to pass onto you …..". It was the "Sick Bank" that made it confusing. I think you meant "Make Up Bank" originally.

Thanks again!

Originally Posted by WearyEyed

4A2B imposes some mild restrictions relating to makeup bank, limiting trip trading with open time, and carryover limits. Then there are options for fixing manning such as voluntary leaves of absences and even early retirement incentives.

4A2C has to be triggered for min guarantee to drop along with other consequences that are spelled out in the CBA.

It should be noted that, “If the Company hires a pilot(s) and adds the pilot(s) to the Master Seniority List, other than pursuant to a court order or arbitration award, the Company shall exit Section 4.A.2.b. effective with the first day of the bid period immediately following the Date of Hire.”

If it takes 2 months with the average line value below 68 CH to go into 4A2b and 2 months with the average above 70 CH to exit, then I doubt hiring will resume this spring.

I believe management intentionally over hired in 2022 with the post pandemic decline in freight volumes on the horizon. This was intentional in order to trigger 4A2b/c during negotiations just to make it look all doom and gloom so that we agree to a subpar and concessionary contract. A little bit extra expense upfront to over staff could easily save FedEx hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the contract if we fall for their trick.

With early retirement packages as a possibility of 4A2B, if they get even 100 senior captains to retire early for a $100,000k bonus check, then that’s 100 additional pilots that won’t get whatever our new retirement package is worth. That incentive (trick) for pilots to retire early could easily save the company millions.

Stay strong and hold the line!

Originally Posted by Crazy Canuck

it never ceases to amaze me how pilots think the company plays games like this with their ENTIRE multi billion dollar business just to spite us a few bucks. Just because our world revolves around us doesn’t meant FDX business plan also does!

Originally Posted by busdriver12

Sure. For example, I know someone who had a major surgery scheduled, and it was during a time when reserve utilization was low. He bid reserve during the month that he had scheduled the surgery. Pulled a couple of days on reserve, called in sick for the rest of the month (was charged very little to his sick bank due to low reserve utilization). Called in sick for the entire next month, and the month after bid reserve, calling off sick for the last few days of the month (once again, charged very few hours to his bank). Totally legal, ethical, within the contract. Smart utilization of bank for a scheduled procedure. They will not charge your sick bank for the entire month when you've pulled a day of reserve, only for what trips you would have been assigned. This works especially well during those times where they are barely using reserves.