My cousin flew for FedEx for many years. He lived in southern California but was "based" in Memphis so he had to commute to work (jumpseat).
One thing he said was pilots enjoyed flying freight as they were able to takeoff, land, and generally maneuver much more aggressively than they could to with passengers.
My first work for FedEx, writing
the software to schedule the fleet,
I did from our living room in Maryland.
My wife was in her Ph.D. program
at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
To write the code,
I had a time sharing terminal and
wrote the code in PL/I on a CP67/CMS
system in Stamford, CT. Nice setup.
I really liked the data structures
and string manipulations in PL/I.
And, yes,
for the great circle calculation, that's
just the law of cosines for spherical
triangles!
Well, for writing the code,
I wanted the basic PL/I manuals
so called the local IBM office to order
them. Soon the manuals came, hand delivered,
complete
with a very interested and attentive
IBM marketing representative! I'm
not sure we ever paid for the manuals!
So, sure, sitting there in our living room,
I explained to the IBM guy what I was
doing. So, sure, he and his branch
office had guessed that anyone who wanted
PL/I manuals was likely up to something
significant and, thus, might also want
a few million bucks worth of hardware, too.
Their guess was correct: Eventually FedEx
did go with IBM (there's a story there, too).
When I got the software written, in six weeks,
also finishing teaching computer science
at Georgetown U., I drove to Memphis and
rented a room.
But I wanted to get home as often as possible.
So, since my work had to do with airplane
operations, FedEx talked the FAA into
letting me ride jump seat as an observer.
It was just I did all my observing
commuting to/from home in Maryland!
Yes, the pilots sometimes flew
somewhat less gracefully than they
would have with a passenger plane.
A lot of the pilots were fresh
from Viet Nam, maybe as fighter
pilots. The pilots were the most
competent, serious, effective,
and professional part of FedEx.
So, one time when I was observing
the pilots for some
reason on the way to landing
wanted to descend quickly.
So, they went down at 6000 feet
per minute. Going down that fast,
in the little jump seat
I was hanging by my seat belt!
Going down that fast also had the
outside of the
plane, still cold from cruise
altitude, suddenly in much warmer and
very humid air. So, we got
a layer of ice over the
front windows and could see nothing.
The pilots
were not concerned at all but
just flew via instruments.
One thing he said was pilots enjoyed flying freight as they were able to takeoff, land, and generally maneuver much more aggressively than they could to with passengers.