My understanding is pilots at the majors (UA/DA/AA) have fairly liberal no-fault call out policies regardless of at-work incidents. Your wife asked you for a d

My understanding is pilots at the majors (UA/DA/AA) have fairly liberal no-fault call out policies regardless of at-work incidents. Your wife asked you for a divorce last night and you can't focus on work? You can call out without consequences. You just couldn't sleep and don't feel able to fly? Call out. They understand the importance of the human factor here and would much rather have to reschedule a flight than have a potentially impaired person make a mistake. Obviously if you're doing this regularly, you're going to have a conversation with management or the chief pilot or someone (I've no idea what the actual reporting structure is) but if you don't abuse the policy, you can call out without consequence. I don't know specifically about FedEx but I imagine they have something somewhat similar, the FedEx/UPS pilot jobs are also considered top tier (but not nearly as top tier as a major long-haul position) with good benefits. I do imagine, especially considering how much press this is getting, that the pilots in this case are going to spend the next week or two doing paperwork and maybe some press even. How quickly they return to flight will probably be dictated primarily by how they feel. Fact is as dramatic as this seems to us it's possible the pilots are completely unfazed and just want to get back to work. I think if they wanted a week or three off to recoup that FedEx would make accommodations. Pilots seem to be treated reasonably well at major airlines (ignoring regionals and subsidiaries, where they are cattle) and the possible negative value of negative press (FedEx fires pilot who saved plane from near-miss for asking for time off to recover!) this should be a no-brainer for them. Pilots also have a good union behind them.