Commuting
To Commute Or Not To Commute, That Is The Question
It’s said time and again that the greatest Quality-of-Life (QoL) in the commercial aviation industry revolves around living in base or domicile.
Commuting in general sucks and reduces the time you have at home. It might add a day on to each end of your trip or you may get home late the same day but only after flying all day then commuting home. The stress level is much higher as well, because you have to ensure you can get to your domicile on time to make your flight, regardless of delays or weather. Either way, the lifestyle of commuting is not ideal.
Let’s consider the Pros and Cons of commuting:
PROS
- You get to live wherever you want, period! You can settle down with your final retirement home and never worry about moving trucks again.
CONS
- You have to travel to your job and therefore you spend a greater time away from home.
- You might have more then one leg of travel to get to your domicile, which is going to get old quick, unless you enjoy flying as a passenger on constantly delaying packed airliners.
- If your are scheduled for an out and back “day trip”, you will be responsible for where you will sleep, because you are back your at domicile. The airline isn’t going to get you a hotel for the night, so that cost will come out of your pocket.
- Most airlines require you to have a backup plan if your first planned commuter craft doesn’t pan out and that is your responsibility to figure out. Stressful!
- If you live only a couple hours away, you could drive to your domicile, but that might come out of your pocket as an extra expense depending on the company. In driving, you put wear and tear on your vehicles as well as the price of gas is always fluctuating.
- Your return jump seat back home can be ruined if your final leg or your planned commuter flight back are delayed enroute by weather or maintenance. Having to replan and deal with delays getting home just makes a bad day worse.
Why You Do Want to Live in Domicile
If you are wanting to spend the greatest possible number of days home, then you want to live in domicile. You get the days back that you would have been using to commute to back and forth to work.
If you are scheduled for trips that end back at your base, you get to sleep at home rather then in a hotel, regardless of your next days schedule. If you chose, you can bid reserve instead of flying a line and since you are home, there are no hotels, crash pads or commutes to worry about. On your days off, you can bid to fly “drop down” flights and “premium” flights if you so choose, and those are generally going to be worth more money as well.
Overall, your time at home will be far greater than the time away and your take home pay will probably be greater with your ability to save money and pick up extra, higher paying flights.
The potential down sides are that you may not get to live in the geographical location you had planned to retire in, but to have a greater QoL, this is something that most of us can accept for a few years at least.
Additionally, it is important to recognize that domiciles open and close throughout a businesses history. This means staying in one location indefinitely may not always workout if the domicile isn’t in a very large city.
Exceptions to the Policy
Exceptions to the rule exist and flying the International routes could be included in that. Some companies fly international (long haul) trips and with those kinds of schedules come a greater number of days working in a row and away from home. Generally, schedules like this are once a month and could be 14+ days at a time. This kind of schedule typically only requires you to commute once monthy, making the annoyance of the commute, less of an issue. Longer trips mean fewer commutes and longer breaks between trips.