FSAirlines

The main problem with the FSA system is the "final mile" pilots get hosed on income as most of the money goes to the long hauler. I can make more flying generic cargo on a regional trip than completing a package delivery from a previous flight.

The system is so complicated, I see no easy fix other than simply flying packages "direct" without any hand offs.

In the real world, freight pilots are paid per flight hour and not per package. So they get paid the same whether the cargo load is full or empty, its up to the company to maximize their profit potential by keeping those planes full as much as possible.

So the only way to make the whole thing feasible (and this is near impossible in our application) is to change the pilot pay from a percentage of the flight revenue to a fixed wage based on flight hours or route distance. If the pilot pay changed to a wage based on the route distance (GPS direct) instead of a percentage of the flight revenue, then it would no longer matter to the pilot what type of cargo is on board, they are getting paid the same. It's the airline bottom line that is affected based on package revenue, generic revenue or passenger revenue for the flight in question and thus becomes much more of a "dispatch game" than just letting pilots "go fish" for packages so they can make more money. THEN (MAYBE) a hub package system would work as the lowly guys are still getting paid the same and not getting stiffed for final mile delivery of packages which pays peanuts.

Just random thoughts in trying to look at the problem from "outside the box".

Also I would use pay per nm vs hour as 16x guys would make a fortune vs 1x speed pilots. Paying for the trip distance, it doesn't really matter what speed they fly the trip, the pay will be the same.

So in VA settings, we would need a pay scale window to allow pilot $----- per nm with a limitation window having both high and low limits.

And of course the discrepancy between small and jumbo jet aircraft is huge currently. For example, I made $6.535 per nm one way flying 181 nm in a CRJ7 and then made $7.215 per nm flying the return trip with better cargo. Our 747 pilot made $28.806 per nm flying a 747-400 Combi 1154 nm. All of our pilots are paid the same currently - 10% flight revenue. So the larger aircraft you fly, the more money you can make. With a pay scale based on nm, we would have to go through and regrade our pay for the ranks so as pilots move up, they make more money per nm, regardless of the size of aircraft they fly. They would then be paid for airline seniority/experience (more like the real world) and not just getting a cut of what each flight makes.

Then comes the question of pilot performance - they still get paid when they crash?
Issues like that would have to be addressed for sure.

Hi All,

I took me a while to read all 9 pages of this topic. Well I will react to last post mainly.

The idea of pilot salary based on NM is good I think, but I still see some problems here. If it will be just optional, so the CEO could choose between 2 salary systems, then it will not solve the problem of money hunting and cleaning airports from cargo, because there still will be the money hunters and the percentage salary fits them more.

On the other side, NM based salary may help to balance better between pilot's revenues but it can rapidly decrease VA income. On a theoretical level, I think that if we take packages from small airports and collect them in our HUB to be delivered to another HUB and be distributed to small airports over there and if the revenue still stays on actual percentage division, let's say the 1st leg 15%, 2nd 70%, 3rd 15% of the packages price, it could generate loss or very low income.

In example:
the distance is 1000nm to deliver packages,
I have C208 Super Cagomaster which can load 2800lbs (counting fuel reserve),
I load cca 31 x (88lbs for 90v$) = ca 2800v$,
the revenue will be 15% of 2800v$ = 420v$.
Minus fuel for 150nm -250v$,
What is salary? 1v$ per NM? Let's say. It's -150v$.
Summary: My VA income is 20v$ (x multiplier) for regional cargo flight (the same on the delivery side)

A pilot flying HUB - HUB makes 700v$ for him, but the plane is large and takes a lot of packages so the VA income is nice.

Is it better for pilots of a VA? Yes. The differences are smaller, but NM based salary is not as fair as it looks like. Why? Time is answer. How much time do I spend in C208 to fly 150nm trip and how much time do I spend in B737 to fly 350nm? The same. Yes I know, 737 captains make much more than pilots of C208 in the real world maybe.

So, are we going to pay pilots for FH? It would be fair for pilots, but VA revenue from the example above could be really loss in this case, because a pilot will spend more time for less miles in a GA aircraft. The flights with accelerated time could be in disadvantage, but if there is tracking of the switching acceleration on/off it could be maybe multiplied somehow in the result.

Anyhow, it seems it is very hard to find balance between salary systems, package system and VA profits. I really like Joe's idea, he build the package system on, but it seams actually the easiest way is grab packages from where I am and bring them to where I will be.

Bruno

Hi,

I am not going to open another topic, I don't know if it's a bug or not, maybe just have a question.

I was looking for some package jobs around for MBPV. The market is not very kind to this place , however I found a nice amount of packages in TDCF for MBPV so I wanted to deliver them. I started to plan the routes and landings to make the journey most profitable, but what a surprise , the packages at TDCF are mostly of size 4409 lbs. The problem is that the airport is quite small with short runway 953m only and I did not find any airplane in our fleet to be able load 4409 lbs packages and be able to land or takeoff over there. So my questions...

How the package system handles this? Is there any relation between package size and size of an airport by generating them? Or is there a plane able to load a 4409 lbs package and land / takeoff on 953m long runway?

Thanks,

Bruno Zvolensky

For an airport to be assigned 2000 kg packages it needs to be of size 'regional' or bigger. I suppose it would not be hard to get a list of all airports without a runway longer than some defined length that are regional or bigger and reset them to municipal. Then the system would stop making those big packages for those airports. What is a reasonable runway length? I did a quick query and found a list of 194 airports marked as regional or bigger where the runway length is either unknown or less than 4000 ft, 445 if we bump that limit up to 5000. One reference I saw said the minimum runway length for a 737-700 is 5500 ft so if we use that as the limit there are 553.

It'd be useful to do that to prevent large packages generating on smaller airports. 5000 limit sounds good, because there are still some turboprops capable to load 2000kg packages (DH8D, F50) and they are able to takeoff from such an airport. But if you want 5500 to cover B737, I'd leave it on your decision.

My additional question is (just interested in) if there was a 2000kg package generated will be there 10pcs of 200kg packages generated instead of that?

brazvo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:02 am It'd be useful to do that to prevent large packages generating on smaller airports. 5000 limit sounds good, because there are still some turboprops capable to load 2000kg packages (DH8D, F50) and they are able to takeoff from such an airport. But if you want 5500 to cover B737, I'd leave it on your decision.

My additional question is (just interested in) if there was a 2000kg package generated will be there 10pcs of 200kg packages generated instead of that?

I have reset all the airports with a runway less than 5000 feet as 'municipal' so they should not get 2000 kg packages any more.

The generation of 200 kg and 2000 kg is independent of each other so you will not see more of those smaller packages, the larger packages will just go some place else.