JeremiahWeed

What the ____ is anyone doing at a midnight showing of a Batman movie (PG-13) with a 4-year old and an infant. This guy is an idiot on several levels.

This is best related in person so you can try to do it with an Australian accent. The Aussies call the -380 the "Flying V@gina" (pronounced "Floying Vagoyna" in Australian).......... Not much to look at but quite nice once you're inside.

Standard fighter pilot answer – it depends…. Fedex has regular direct flights between ANC and MEM, IND, EWR, OAK and SEA. So, if you can get yourself to one of those airports fairly easily, it’s pretty painless getting there/back. The best scenario would be if you could drive to one of these airports. The next option would be taking a Fedex flight from your home airport to one of these locations and connecting. These flights normally depart around 0300L and arrive around 0700-0800L in ANC. Having some regular pax carriers as occasional backups can help too. Alaska Airlines flies year round to ANC non-stop from ORD, DEN, LAX, PDT and SEA. They also have a number of connections from points further east through these cities. We get a good discount on them through our corporate travel department, so if you have to buy an occasional ticket it’s usually $400 or less for one-way, first class. If you have extra $$ in your travel bank, you can get Fedex to cover the ticket. Most of the other pax carriers provide seasonal summer service from around Jun-Sep. Some may go year round but I’m not sure. Generally speaking, unless you’re coming out of someplace close like SEA, you’re not going to want to make the commute more than twice a month. Once you get some seniority (or you’re just lucky w/ trip trading), you can get trips that start or end (or both) with deadheads to another city. I usually only go up once a month and fly one big trip (or series of trips) unless I have trips with deadheads. I’m at about the 60% point for seniority in ANC and things are very manageable for me. I was able to make it work even when I was at 90% and stuck on reserve. Even as a junior guy there, the options to massage your schedule are pretty good. If you’re on reserve, there are many reserve schedules with one big block of work days and more with two blocks. Typical trips from ANC are to Asia with a small number to the lower 48 and back or occasionally on to Europe. The best commuting scenario (other than deadheads) would be a late afternoon/evening departure. You could arrive on the jumpseat that morning, go to the hotel for 6-8 hours and show for your trip that same day. Worst case is a morning departure. You’ll be arriving in ANC the day before and have about 24 hours until your show time (not a bad thing in the summer if you like to fish or hike). Most trips return to ANC around noon local time. The flights to the lower 48 you’ll want to jumpseat on leave around 1500L. So, you hang for a few hours and then start making your way home. The nice thing about jumpseating to ANC is that the bunks on 777 and MD-11s are unused on those flights. You can jump in the rack and get some decent sleep going in either direction. Worst case, the MD-11 has no bunk and you’re sleeping on a floor mat. That’s still way better than any first class seat on a pax carrier and the food is better. Eventually, when you can hold a decent schedule, you don’t even need a crash pad. Hotels have cheap crew rates and 2-3 nights per month (I usually buy one night unless it’s a training month) are still cheaper than most crash pads. The hotels provide transpo to the airport so you don’t have to manage a car up there. You can imagine that hassle that comes with leaving a car parked in ANC for a week or two unused while you’re on days off. Overall, my commuting expenses are far less in ANC than they were when I commuted to MEM. Being a new hire commuting to ANC won’t be pain free. Unless things totally stagnate, I think the pain would be manageable and reasonably short. Going to MEM as a new-hire with ANC as a follow-on after you’ve been here a few years is another option. If your family situation isn’t conducive to you being gone for 1-2 weeks each time you leave, then commuting to ANC probably isn’t for you. Maybe more info than you were looking for but hopefully it helps. JW

Copy. Thanks. Maybe the info will be useful to someone else.

Scoobs, There is a lot of this type of flying at Fedex. I was concerned about how I would deal with it when I got hired. I always thought nights were an EP in the Eagle and I had flown red-eyes from the west coast to points east while employed with UAL and thought they blew. I was surprised to find that when I was based in MEM (and couldn't hold international flying), I actually preferred nights over the types of day flying available domestically. I can give you more details if you'd like but the bottom line is, I found it reasonably easy to sleep during the day (in a hotel). The duty days ("nights") are generally shorter and easier than typical days with a pax carrier. I'm now based in ANC flying almost 100% international, so things are different but generally easier than the night flying I did domestically (so it can get better quickly if you can get to a place like ANC-we have new hires going there now). I commute there from the midwest US and my pay hours are higher with more days off than when I was based in MEM. As far as the ANC guy who never "hub turns", I think he may be forgetting that many of our trips here have 2 legs (day or night) through stations in Asia. Most guys would call that hub-turning (even if the station you fly through is not an official hub like MEM). i.e. Take off from HKG at 2000L, fly to TPE, gas/load/go, fly to KIX (arriving around 0500L) and go to the hotel. If he's never done anything like that, it's probably because he's just been lucky - not because that type of thing is rare in ANC ('cuz it ain't). Bottom line - Don't let the night stuff keep you from applying (if you're interested). The back side flying isn't really as bad as I had heard (IMO). If you find it is, there are ways to avoid it until you get senior. Overall, I'd take a Fedex schedule over any pax schedule I had. Cheers, JW

How about a LOX retrofit on a few jets. Go back to something proven - see if things improve. Whatever it would cost seems like it couldn't be more than losing another bro and jet.