Airline Pilot, FedEx

>> Hi, my name is Bernie Ryan. [phonetic] And I'm an airline pilot for FedEx. And a trip will vary in length from one day to somewhere as long as two weeks, even going around the world. But an average length of a trip is about one week, five to six days. And if you're like me who lives, what we call a commuter, does not live in Memphis, means I need to commute down to Memphis, go on my trip and then commute back. And then another unique thing of FedEx, compared to with Delta or American, is most of, a lot of our flying is at night. So I'll leave, I'll commute down and take off about 10:30 at night, ride down to Memphis on the back of a FedEx plane, get off that plane about two hours later and get in my plane ready to start out. So we take off about 3:00 in the morning and head out to wherever I'm going. And then from there I'll be, let's say, to an outlying city. We'll stay the day in that city and that evening we'll turn around and fly to Memphis, unload the plane. They'll reload it up again and I'll turn around and go back to that city or somewhere else and we'll repeat that for several days in a row. Airline business is all based on seniority, as far as flying. So the most senior people get to pick first of the routes. What's very unique about FedEx is, imagine that, there's only two of us, and that's it. We don't have a crew, like you see on American Airlines or one of the passenger carriers where they have the flight attendants. It's just the two of us. We hit the road and off we go, which makes it pretty nice. It's not hard trying to get everybody organized to get out to the plane or you know wait for the van or whatever. What happens is one is one is designated the Captain and the other is called the First Officer, or what's more commonly known as the Co-Pilot. But you alternate legs so that one leg, but it's the Captain's call. He could do everything if he wanted and not let the Co-Pilot fly at all and then that Co-Pilot is just handling the radios and the backup duties. But typically you'll just take turns taking off and landing. You never switch seats. The Captain is always in the left seat, first officer is always in the right seat.