Been a hot minute since I’ve posted here, but hopefully it will help. Late last summer/early fall I gave up the left seat of a ULCC for my dream shot with the legacy I grew up wanting to fly for. We moved back to the area where I grew up in north county SAN and I now drive to LAX (sometimes SNA but usually LAX) and it’s usually a little shy of 2hrs to cover the 118 miles from our driveway to the LAX parking garage. SNA has consistently clocked in between 1:15-1:30. Factor in getting from the garage to the gate and on an “typical” day I can sit short call at home as long as I’m packed and ready to get the monkey suit on and hit the road asap. Once or twice in rush hour traffic, LAX has been 2.5 hours if not a little longer with the worst being 3.5hrs on the day before thanksgiving. I knew it would be bad so I budgeted plenty of time and made it with room to spare. BUT, it beats hoping I get a seat, and hoping nothing happens to make a commute run late. As long as I plan ahead and find a good podcast or two, it’s a perfectly pleasant drive.
For those interested, when I left my ULCC I was 45% company wide closing in on 7yrs of longevity with a 20-30min drive to work. We were living in a city my wife and I had little to no connection with and where we had zero family. I left the company for several reasons, but mostly the money wasn’t enough to put up with being perpetually treated like the bottom feeding regional with whom I started my 121 career. In addition to several concerns regarding systemic operational issues and a rapid erosion of our QoL due to significant changes in pairing construction and the ability to drop/swap trips, I had genuine concerns over the company’s ability to recruit/retain pilots to fuel an ambitious growth plan. Perhaps most importantly, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering “what if”/not having really gone after the dream job. I have always wanted to fly really big airplanes to destinations really far away, and right now the industry is in as good a position as I’ve seen in my 15+ years of professional flying to facilitate a move like this. After much consternation, my wife finally had enough and told me to come talk to her “if/when you get the job offer.”
So far, I am glad I made the move. My regrets are not having continued to try to get here after we signed new contract at said ULCC a few years ago, and having to sell a very nice house where we lived, in which we had a killer backyard. But if those are my biggest regrets, I’ll consider it a good move. Hopefully, whenever I set the parking brake for the last time I can say it was the right move.
