Commuting to Reserve

Commuting sucks, commuting to reserve is a whole different level of suck.

This month, I'm long call at a legacy (12 hour call out). My commute is such, that I cant guarantee I can be in position from home in 12 hours. So I sit in the crash pad. I just finished a two day trip, already assigned a nasty three day tomorrow, that pretty much insures I won't get home on my last day. So I'll get home around 10:30, on my one day off. I'll have to leave the house at 03:00 on my next reserve day to get back to base. So I'll basically have just over 24 hours at home in 10 days.

I want to move to base, but after two weeks here looking at houses, and checking out various areas around my new base, the rest of my family decided that don't want here to be "home".
 
If you end up paying out of pocket for hotels when commuting to reserve, do you get a tax write off for that?
 
In all seriousness, I’ll chime in. Commuting (for me) hasn’t been too terrible. Granted I’ve been fortunate to not have to be on reserve long at my regional. Maybe 3-4 months when I was an FO. 2 of those were on Long Call Reserve with a 12 hour call-out time which made it easy to sit at home in Florida. My time on short call reserve was spent couch surfing at my cousin’s and playing, “who’s farts are stinkier?” with his dog. So again, not too bad.

I think one of the great benefits of this job is to be able to live anywhere you like. It’s just a question of how much and what type of commute you’re willing I tolerate to do so. My wife loves the beach and we live 5 minutes from it. So we aren’t moving anytime soon. Happy wife for me is worth the commute.
 
Commuting to reserve sucks if you’re a regional FO. The reason for that is you are already financially stretched and adding commuting costs ie crash pad/hotels you’re most likely in the negative every month. If you get used a lot that helps as you can rack up some per diem, but if you’re not used and getting min guarantee paychecks it can be stressful.

I’m not saying commuting to reserve as a major airline pilot doesn’t suck, because I’m sure it does. I’m just saying it has to be less painful if you’re not scraping by in the process. As a first year SkyWest FO commuting to LAX I had maybe 100-150 dollars a month to live on after all bills and commuting costs were covered. That meant while sitting reserve not getting used, I was eating very cheap and just trying to keep myself entertained. Now, if I was a major airline pilot making a much bigger paycheck I may have had a better time. Like trying local cuisine, taking an Uber to the beach for surfing lessons or just playing tourist while not on duty. If finances weren’t an issue I’m sure I would have enjoyed my time in LAX a lot more. I would have loved to have brought my wife down to share some days in the sun and take advantage of some attractions the area had to offer, but again financially that wasn’t a good idea.

A mainline United 787 FO was briefly in my crash pad in LAX, shortly after he rented his own room in Redondo Beach. He had the financial ability to get out of an overly packed crash pad in Inglewood. He enjoyed commuting to reserve, he would go golfing a few times a week and to him it was almost a vacation away from home. He would rent cars and get out and about, go to sports games or concerts. To me, that didn’t sound like that hard of a life. However, he was still away from home away from family. Something that no amount of money makes any better, so living in base especially on reserve is just all around a better deal
 
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Commuting to reserve on the 900 in NYC as an FO is hell at my shop. I fly with reserve FOs all the time and I usually let them take almost every leg because it’s the first time they’ve touched the plane in a month. They commute to sit in a crash pad.
 
Jordan93 said:
Commuting to reserve on the 900 in NYC as an FO is hell at my shop. I fly with reserve FOs all the time and I usually let them take almost every leg because it’s the first time they’ve touched the plane in a month. They commute to sit in a crash pad.
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I have a buddy doing this with Envoy on 145. 5 days of sitting around, no flying. Back home to Texas for 2 days just to do it all over again. One turn to DTW in a month of that.
 
I've commuted to reserve a few months. It really depends on your contract and the flights in between home and your base city.

If I had short call, what I'd consider a 2-hour call-out, I'd be in DTW (@Richman be like "LOL, about the myriad interpretations of that when it comes to 747 pilots), but if I had long call, 12 hour call-out,I was on my fat duff at home in PHX. But I had a bunch of backup plans in place between redeyes and other altenatives if I got called at 1800 eastern for an 0600 eastern show. But generally speaking at my airline and in my base and category, it seems that most of the next day assignments got made around 11-ish eastern. So basically I'd be having my ColonClear-brand oatmeal and discover I was flying the next day.
 
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