WASHINGTON &#8212 Catching a flight out of Buffalo soon?

If so, your odds of getting an experienced pilot would be much higher if you were a package

rather than a person.

While regional passenger airlines can hire pilots with as little as 250 hours of flying

experience, FedEx has required 1,500 hours of flight time for its pilots for as long as

Frederick W. Smith, its chairman, can remember.

UPS, meanwhile, rarely hires a pilot with fewer than 5,000 hours of experience, a company

spokesman said.

Both of those shipping giants say they strongly support an aviation bill that toughens

pilot hiring standards at passenger airlines.

But a Capitol Hill battle between those rivals on a labor issue now threatens to sink that

entire bill &#8212 along with the safety provisions that the Families of Continental Flight

3407 fought to include.

In the midst of it all, the families are trying to stay clear of the fight between FedEx

and UPS while noting the irony that the parcel companies have the pilot hiring standards they

have been pushing at regional airlines.

&#8220We don&#8217t have a horse in that race,&#8221 Scott Maurer, one of the most active

members of the families group, said of the labor battle between FedEx and UPS.

&#8220These two companies want to make sure their air crews and the packages they deliver

arrive safe and sound,&#8221 said Maurer, who lost his daughter Lorin in the plane crash in

Clarence in February 2009. &#8220That&#8217s why they hire experienced pilots. The same

standards should should apply at regional airlines.&#8221

FedEx requires an Air Transport Pilot (ATP) license and its 1,500 minimum flight hours, for

its pilots. The House version of the aviation bill includes that standard, which the families

also are advocating.

&#8220When you get in one of these transport category airplanes and you don&#8217t have

that criteria, it&#8217s not a certainty that you&#8217re going to have the requisite

experience to operate it safely or reliably all the time,&#8221 said Smith, a retired Marine

who founded Federal Express in the early 1970s.

Support for standards

Should the same standards apply to passenger airlines?

&#8220We totally support them,&#8221 Smith said. &#8220We think it is a perfectly

reasonable threshold to apply.&#8221

UPS also requires the transport license for its pilots &#8212 but in practice, it

doesn&#8217t hire pilots with fewer than 5,000 hours of flight time, said Norman Black,

company spokesman.

&#8220UPS supports passage of the [Federal Aviation reauthorization] bill as soon as

possible,&#8221 Black said.

The bill, which authorizes funding for the FAA, also implements NextGen, a reinvention of

the air traffic control system that moves it from the world of World War II radar to a state-

of-the-art GPS technology. That&#8217s hugely important to both the cargo and passenger

airlines as well as a big safety issue, Smith and other aviation experts said.

The trouble is, the House and Senate passed different versions of that FAA bill, and some

of the differences are more easily resolved than others.

The easiest, congressional aides said, include the pilot experience issue. While the House

bill requires 1,500 hours of flight time, the Senate &#8212 under pressure from flight schools

and the airlines &#8212 opted for 800 hours.

Senate and House aides said they expect the two houses will compromise somewhere in the

middle on the pilot hours issue.

But they warned that no middle ground can be found on the FedEx-UPS issue that threatens to

kill the entire FAA bill.

That involves a provision inserted into the House bill by Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., at

the behest of UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The provision would allow

the drivers who take packages from FedEx planes to their destinations, along with support

personnel, to organize under the National Labor Relations Act rather than the Railway Labor

Act.

Different rules

That&#8217s important to the Teamsters because the Railway Labor Act allows unions to

organize only on a national basis, while the National Labor Relations Acts allows workers to

organize locally.

In other words, the change would make it much easier for the Teamsters to organize FedEx

drivers and support staff all over the country &#8212 just as they had done years ago at UPS.

And that, Smith said, could be a disaster for the company he created.

&#8220We could not live with 25 different unions in 25 different locations with 25

different contract expiration dates,&#8221 Smith said.

Worse yet, he added, any one of those local unions at a FedEx hub would be able to

essentially shut down the company&#8217s air delivery system if the drivers went on strike.

So if the provision were to pass, FedEx would cut back on investment in its hugely popular

air parcel delivery operation, Smith said.

&#8220We would be imprudent&#8221 to keep investing in it, said Smith, who termed the

provision &#8220a political maneuver by Jim Oberstar on behalf of UPS to injure FedEx, to

accomplish through legislative fiat what they were not able to do on the corporate

battlefield.&#8221

FedEx might not have to worry, though, because Tennessee&#8217s two senators have vowed to

prevent Oberstar&#8217s measure from becoming law. FedEx, based in Memphis, is that

city&#8217s largest employer.

&#8220The Senate did the right thing by excluding a provision to penalize Memphis-based

FedEx under federal labor laws,&#8221 Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said last month.

&#8220I&#8217ll do everything in my power to make sure it stays that way.&#8221

UPS and the Teamsters, meanwhile, are doing everything in their power to retain that

provision.

Push by Teamsters

UPS notes that a year after a 1995 change in federal law forced FedEx to be regulated under

the more labor-friendly law, the company got Congress to insert a provision into an aviation

bill to reverse that policy.

&#8220FedEx has used its unique position under the law to try to lure customers from other

delivery companies by claiming that its service somehow is more secure,&#8221 Scott Davis,

chairman and CEO of UPS, said in a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal. &#8220FedEx has

leveraged its special treatment under the law to avoid fair and open competition.&#8221

The Teamsters couldn&#8217t agree more.

They say subjecting FedEx and UPS to different labor laws is just a quirk of history.

FedEx started as an airline, meaning like all airlines, it was governed by the Railway

Labor Act. UPS started as a ground shipping company and, therefore, is covered by the more

union-friendly National Labor Relations Act, even though it later started shipping packages by

air to compete with FedEx.

Smith conceded that his company and UPS are now in a &#8220Coke-Pepsi situation.&#8221

And Ken Hall, international vice president and director of the Teamsters Package Division,

said that very fact should be enough to convince Congress that all drivers at both companies

should have equal rights to organize.

Fears for reforms

&#8220A driver is a driver is a driver,&#8221 Hall said. &#8220FedEx has spent millions of

dollars to defeat this provision so they can continue to deny some of its drivers of the same

rights every other driver has.&#8221

While the FedEx-UPS battle continues, the Families of Flight 3407 fear that the reforms

they seek might be a casualty if the entire bill stalls.

&#8220There are a lot of really good things in these bills to improve aviation

safety,&#8221 said Karen Eckert, who lost her sister, 9/11 activist Beverly Eckert. &#8220We

would like Congress to keep the eye on the ball here. ... Public safety should trump

everything else.&#8221

Buy me a favor?

Labor issue prompts FedEx, UPS to boost spending on lobbying

YearFederal lobbying at FedExFederal lobbying at UPS

2009$16.4 million$8.4 million

2008$8.9 million$5.3 million

2007$5.5 million$2.5 million

2006$3.2 million$3.0 million

Source: Center for Responsive Politics compilation of federal lobbying reports